Unsung Heroes
by Biscuitz
Summary: 'Mélodie, since, well since she was born in fact, had always been tenacious, stubborn, hot headed and fiery – she was most assuredly her mother's daughter.'
1. Chapter 1

10 years, in fact over 10 years, since I wrote my first story on here - that's mental. And 5 years since I published my last story on here! This fandom man, whenever I think I'm past it, it pulls me back in.

I have actually been fairly busy as of recent trying to write a novel but was struggling to get out of the planning stage and into the actual writing. So I reread some of my old stuff in the hope of break the ice and before I knew it I'd wrote this thing. I guess it worked because it is the longest thing I have ever written. Longer than any of my other fics, it's like half a novel worth of writing. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it but God what am I doing with my life? XD.

Like Crimson Report 2, I could have put this into chapters but it was always intended to be one piece - and blame Terry Prachett for showing me chapters are optional ha.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all and hope you enjoy.

* * *

"Mélodie, what did you do this time?"

"I didn't _do_ anything."

"Mélodie."

"I did _say_ something though...I told her she couldn't be the princess because her nose is too big, that she should be the Bolt Drake instead – but she started it anyway cos-!"

"Oh, sh sh ssh enough. I don't want to hear it"

The hairbrush tugged through the child's unruly brunette hair. She sat on a crimson pink pouffe, pouting sulkily at her reflection in the dressing table mirror. She puffed a kinked strand out of the way of her deep brown eyes, it was making her nose itch

"It's so dumb. I would have been the Bolt Drake, they're really cool, just princesses don't have such big noses so I _had_ to be the princess."

"I said enough."

Her mother sat in the ornate chair behind her, steadily starting to have an easier time with the brush. Her eyebrows were knotted and she seemed to be carefully considering her next few words. It probably could have done with a bit more since what she did eventually say was laced with frustrated undertones.

"Why can't you be a good little girl?"

"I am good!" Mélodie spun around, "I'm the best!"

"Oh, you know what I mean, love." Leblanc signed, "I leave the Château for the day and come back to find you trying to Chinese burn another girl's arm until it's numb, _again!"_ She turned her daughter's head back to the mirror and added. "It's not acceptable behaviour, little girls shouldn't squabble."

Mélodie continued to brood, picking at the stitching of the pouffe.

"What is your daddy going to think when he sees you next? Hmm? He wouldn't allow that sort of behaviour"

"Huh, yeah, if he even comes this time." Mélodie sniffed to her curled up knees, more so than to her mother, "and he'd let me get away with anything, he hasn't a clue. He doesn't even know how old I am."

"Mélodie, that's not true."

"It is! He didn't come last time when he said he would and when I went to see him he just dumped me on a load of assistants while he worked."

"Your daddy is a busy man Mélodie, he has a lot to take care of."

"But I never get to see him and when I do it's pointless – he doesn't care!"

"Mélodie! Don't speak about your daddy like that."

"He doesn't do anything with me, he breaks promises, he doesn't take me to any of the new islands, even though he goes all the time, and he doesn't know anything about me."

"You know, Mélodie, you might just get to see daddy more if you went to the Bevellian Academy. Your daddy goes to Bevelle a lot and there is so much to see and do there. They have an auditorium! And a great big library! And you'll get to make all sorts of new friends and the uniform is just precious."

"Ugh enough with the Academy mum!" The girl whined. "I'm not going, and it doesn't matter where I am dad still won't come to see me."

Leblanc stood up and placed the hairbrush on the dressing table with great tested patience. It had been a long day, actually, a lot of days had been long as of recent. She had travelled out to Bevelle from Gagazet that morning to meet with Shinra for another conference on the corporation. The new islands had an increased demand for spheres, it didn't ever seem to decline, since first contact their curiosity and fascination for spheres only seemed to grow. They could run power from them, archive valuable data, improve defense, some had also tried to eat them for a while but chipped teeth taught them better. Shinra was even developing a new way to utilise spheres as containers for energy harnessed from the Vegnagun remains, but it was a long way off.

The Syndicate was beginning to wain under the demand, but Leblanc was not beat, she would expand. Leblanc had increased support and funds to Bikanel to aid Shinra's research and had re-allocated teams in the south-west fractured isles to one of the far north ones, hoping to find more material there. She'd have to keep an eye on it, but the other would have to stay firmly on her daughter's inherent need to cause chaos. She often wished she had another set of eyes for Mélodie altogether.

"Mélodie. You need to understand that your daddy has a job that affects a lot of people and a lot of Spira, and more. He loves you but sometimes things just happen that he can't control."

The little girl's eyebrows furrowed and, with a huff, she crossed her arms and looked away.

"Well, love, if it's like that then I think it's time someone went to bed."

"Am I grounded?" Mélodie grumbled.

"No," her mother chuckled, "but I do think someone is a very tiredy little custard."

She cupped the child's face in her hands and went to give her an Eskimo kiss. The response was a half-hearted grouse and a squirm.

* * *

Mélodie was out of bed. Because bed was dumb.

To be fair a lot of things are 'dumb' or 'stupid' to a seven-year-old. Eating vegetables, not running in hallways and tidying your room were some fine examples. But bed, especially being in bed before nine at night, was famously one of the dumber stupid things.

She crept along the upper floor corridor, past her mother's room and padded softly down the mauve carpet lined stairs. If she was caught, she'd say she couldn't sleep, that the mid-winter snowstorms of the mountain howled and rattled at her windows too loudly, that she needed to wait for it to pass, a horror novel to fill the time and perhaps a mug of hot cocoa.

She slid along the chilly marble floors, ramping up and then flinging herself about on her socks with all the grace of an ice-skating shoopuf. Her destination, the kitchen, for that cocoa and, if she knew where to look, a cookie – and she did, because Mélodie embezzled them all the time. Mélodie had never seen the old Château but she was told it was far smaller than the Gagazet one; the one she had grown up in. Here everything was bespoke and built for purpose. It was spacious, with plentiful housing and sprawling training areas. There was even a library she liked to go hide in when she was in trouble (and read in obviously). Additionally, with the passing of time and the Syndicate being of an age now where it was beginning to produce a whole new generation of young sphere hunters, there were classrooms also. These were Mélodie's least favourite rooms.

With a piping hot mug cradled in her hands and a juicy, chewy, chocolate chip cookie wedged between her teeth she expertly hopped of the counter like a cat burglar with a limp and shuffled out the kitchen door. Now for that horror novel, to the library! Scuttling down the corridors she made sure to litter the stonework with just as many crumbs and splatters of cocoa as was necessary, the trail concluded at a little snug in the back corner of the reading room. A bean bag, with a blanket, overflowing with papers adorned with graffiti by her hand, mugs piled high to one side but still dwarfed by the book towers. She wasn't actually reading them all she just wanted to make a fort. Mélodie also liked this spot because it was near the door out to the balcony and the way the snow dimmed any streaming light to a dusky blue hue and the way the wind shuddered the glass doors added much to the atmosphere of her favourite reads. Her mother didn't like her reading horror, she wanted her to ready fantastical, whimsical tales, which Mélodie retorted were for babies, or worse romance which made her want to gag.

She plucked a flashlight from under the bean bag before plunging into it, blanket thrown astride, nose thrust against the pages and the cocoa perilously poised between her knees, marshmallow's bobbing. This book was about a scientist who was despairing for his deceased love, he tried a whole string of heinous and diabolic experiments to return her to the world of the living but, when he finally succeeded, the woman he resurrected was not how he remembered; she was a frightful abomination. Ok, so there was a bit of romance, hands up, it wasn't really the genre Mélodie was adverse to but more so when her mother read it to her. She actually liked 'girly' things, she always wore ribbons, though she had to have a new one every day because she lost them, she liked to show off her decorative dresses at a chance and her dolls were never ever for sharing with any of the other children. She mainly rough and tumbled because she craved that childish thrill of winding her mother up.

In the end, the scientist turned out to be an unsent himself, she'd read this one before.

 _The thunder rocked the laboratory, fierce forks of lightning lashing the sky._ Oh, this was the best bit. _The elementals danced along the wires, pulsing the rotting corpse with waves of electric charge. Dr. Viorel clung to the switch. He sweated, his pulse racing, his eyes darting, 'She'll be mind again! You watch me! A pox on your realms of death!' he spurned at the ceiling. Pyreflies goaded as he cackled and shook. The body on the table trembled, and then it sounded, a heartbeat, clear as a bell, echoing around the tower like a gong. The theatrics cease. Dr Viorel's eyes narrowed, a foot daring to tread toward the operating table, he gingerly gripped the corner of the white sheet._ Here it comes! _Man or beast beneath he knew not. His breath noosed, hands quivering, that damnable heartbeat thumping louder like it was within his very skull. The sheet twitched, slipping away, his eyes wide, mouth agape, on the table there was-!_

 **Creeeeak – KA-CLANG!**

"Aaaaah!"

"Wha-oah!"

The book was catapulted across the floor, spiralling like a faulty boomerang. The blanket billowed up, clutched in Mélodie's white knuckles as she hunkered down and the bean bag seemed to swallow her like a clam. Somehow she managed to save the hot cocoa, today was a good day to be a hot cocoa.

The wind whooshed into the room, sending papers fluttering off like parchment butterflies and the wooden floor had been coated with an almost pleasing layer of icing sugar snow. One of the glass doors to the balcony was open, swinging gently and looking a little abused. Across from it, opposite Mélodie, was a very tall figure, half bent backwards over a desk, one hand gripping at its chest, the other frozen in fumble for something at its hip.

She sniffed, she caught a slight drift of tobacco and ochu pollen and slowly unfurled.

"Oh, it's just you." She said nonchalantly, kicking the blanket off.

"For Fayth's sake! What are you doing here?" Logos gasped, pushing himself off the desk and now standing, partially buckled in the threshold, hands up against the door frame and face turned to the freezing air.

"I couldn't sleep." Mélodie responded matter-a-factly, taking a satisfying gulp of cocoa.

"Oh," Logos huffed, eyes rolling, "that old chestnut."

"It doesn't matter, you won't tell mum."

Logos pocked around in his front pocket for another cigarette to soothe his freshly prickled nerves.

"Is that so. Why do you say that, young lady?"

"Because you never do. Anyway, why aren't you smoking in your room like normal."

Logos lit the roll of paper with his silver flip lighter and inhaled before puffing the smoke out through his nostrils.

"I needed to get some air." He responded plainly.

The fact of the matter was Logos had been charged with overseeing the legislation for sending a party of Goons up to the northern islands; new lands, new laws. There were currently so many documents strewed about his chamber he worried lighting a cigarette in there may have caused a raging inferno.

"Can I have one?"

"You most certainly can not!"

"Why? You don't want to share, Scrooge?"

Logos exhaled through the corner of his mouth.

"Now _that_ I will tell your mother."

He probably would have been more shocked if it wasn't for the fact that Mélodie asked for one every single time he sparked up. He'd surmised a long time ago that she didn't actually want one, she just desired to be seen to be wanting one in order to appear all rebellious and 'screw the man'.

"Yeah, well I'll tell her you're smoking in the Château."

"I'm not smoking in the Château, I'm smoking outside." He rebutted, waving his hands around in the chill through the door.

"Your feet are in the library, you're smoking inside." She jeered, "I'll tell, I will."

An exasperated Logos shook his head and flicked the cigarette into the gradually mounting snow piles outside. He shouldn't really be smoking in front of her anyway, he'd been explicitly told not to in fact since, as Leblanc had put it, it 'gave her ideas'.

There were a lot more rules like that now that smaller, more 'youthfully inclined', people had begun popping up in the Syndicate. Logos didn't much care for the new regulations, believing that the ankle-biters would learn sooner or later (in Mélodie's case a lot sooner) and, Hell, it was probably good for them anyway. Still, what he _did_ like was how children had this peculiar ability to bring everyone down to the same level, often through excruciating embarrassment. Having none of his own he got to just sit back and enjoy the show. Over the years, due to Mélodie's particular talent and enthusiasm for this area of study, Leblanc had suffered numerously from bouts of extreme faux pas, which had forced her to appear, much to her displeasure, as more human. The scales had tipped, Logos and Leblanc now found themselves on more, well not equal footing, Leblanc was still assuredly and undeniable 'The Boss', but more of a levelled playing field. Less a sheer cliff face and more a gently sloped meadow, the kind you find goats nibbling on...and the grass is wet and slippery so you better watch your step.

Mélodie set her now empty mug aside, crowning the crockery totem.

"Hey, heeeey! Have you fallen asleep standing up?"

"No."

"Shoopufs do that you know." She smirked.

"You should go to bed."

"You should do this, you should do that." She scowled, "Why?"

"Because." Logos spoke bluntly, re-latching the door closed.

"Because what? Not like anything important is happening tomorrow."

"Because then you'll leave me alone."

"Haha, very funny."

Mélodie scuffled out of the bean bag and across to her forlorn book. She picked it up and wandered back to her snug, searching for her lost page.

"It's not like I get to do anything important around here," she scoffed, "or fun, or interesting, or... anything at all."

She resettled herself, still trying to find her place.

"You and mum and all the others get to go off and do cool things. You get to look for spheres, you get to cut up fiends, you get to go to the new islands – I've only got to go to one once and it was so boring. I didn't get to see anything, just had to listen to a load of grown-ups talk."

This had been for a wedding. The former New Yevon Praetor, and now a Spiran High Councillor, Baralai, had wed the daughter of a very well respected and influential nobleman on the prominent island to the north-east. It was much more of a political union but the pair also seemed very fond of one another which was a reassuring plus. Mélodie had had to sit in a temple for three hours listening to mushy romantics, sentimental speeches and, occasionally, stern warnings from her mother every time she began to fidget. She also had to endure a lot of coddling, cooing and 'oh isn't she precious!' from people her mother seemed to know but she had never seen before in her life. She had been disappointed, she was hoping they might go to the island with the big theme park instead.

Logos was now propped on the desk, a hand rubbing his tired eyes.

"You're still too young for all that. You'll get your chance when you're older I'm sure."

"Not if mum has anything to do with it." She plonked the book down, she couldn't find the sodding page. "If it were up to her I'd stay in the Château all the time and the only time I'd get to leave is to see dad, which might as well be never anyway."

She scrunched up into the bean bag, arms folded and pouting.

"Well, maybe," Logos yawned, "if you weren't such a little terror and stopped trying to break people's limbs your mother might be more inclined to let you do more of those 'interesting' and 'important' things. At the moment to let you on the world would be considered a danger to the public."

Mélodie stuck her tongue out at him. He stood up, his own arms folded, and gazed down at the girl with lukewarm authority.

"Go to bed, squirt."

"I'm not even allowed to try any of the weapons, I'm barely allowed to use a potato peeler. I could use mum's fan! It's easy, I've seen it, I don't know what all the fuss is about."

"Oh stop moaning, bed, now."

"No." She groped for her book again. "I'm not tired, I'm going to read."

The gunner yawned again and shrugged. Whatever, Mélodie would do what she pleased and it wasn't his job to enforce anything on the little brat anyway.

"Suit yourself." He turned and, with hands shoved into the pockets of his double-breasted jacket, strode out of the library.

"Chump," Mélodie snorted, before flicking the flashlight back on and rifling through the pages.

* * *

Logos stalked along the winding corridors towards the west wing, jodhpur boots sounding a residual clop. He rounded the corner, breaking off the path just as it met the dormitories, to mount a short flight of steps and then sweep under an archway to where his two tiered office and bedchamber was situated.

He gripped the brass handle purposely, then stopped. His head turned to look over his shoulder at the finely adorned and swooping staircase that he had just crossed under. With that shade of carpet there was no question it lead to anywhere but Leblanc and Mélodie's rooms. Struck tall half way up was an imperiously large window, the storming snow lashing against it, but through all the powder he could just spy the reflection of yellow lamp light. It would be from The Boss's room.

Logos sighed, hand slipping from the door handle, before climbing the stairs.

The door to Leblanc's room was open, just a pinch, Logos half pondered whether Mélodie had snuck up behind him without him seeing and stole her way in. But no, even at full pelt she wouldn't have been able to beat him here. With some apprehension, his long arm reached out and rapped lightly on the wood. There was a short pause, which nearly made him turn back, before,

"Yes, come in."

Inside, Leblanc sat eyes down at her desk. She had all the hallmarks of someone who had tried their utmost to get to the land of nod but couldn't quite reach it. Her attire was very typical for someone looking to make the 'journey', with a glamorous silk and fur dressing-gown thrown in for good measure. Her long blonde hair was clumped into a messy, ragged bun on the top of her head and she kept unhinging feathery strands from it when she would unconsciously run her fingers through her locks. Squinting (more than usual anyway) through the low hue of the wall-mounted lights, Logos could just make out her expression, it was concentrated, the thoughtful wrinkle in her forehead highlighted by the dim glow of the orb-shaped, holographic map on her right.

The tall man mindfully closed the chamber door behind him.

"She's not in bed, is she?" Leblanc suddenly spoke, gaze not budging from the charts sprawled on the desk.

Logos, who had had no intention to tattle on Mélodie (she was right, he never did), found himself off guard.

"Erm, oh, no she's not."

This would be the second time Logos gave someone a fright that night. Leblanc would have probably flinched less if someone had just sounded a fog horn in her ear. Her pen dropped to the table with a faint splatter of ink.

"Oh! Oh, it's you."

She had presumed it was one of her daughter's nannies who had entered (Mélodie was such a handful she needed more than one). If she had had any inkling it was her gun slinging cohort she might have made more of an effort to tie her gown a little tighter, she was now giving the ribbon a double knot with some lack of subtlety.

"Where is she, love?"

"She's downstairs, in the library, her usual spot."

Logos rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, feeling a twinge of guilt for giving the little girl away, it quickly passed though.

"Should I get one of the Goons to fetch her, Boss?"

Leblanc then did something quite odd, she put her head in her hands. For a brief uncomfortable moment she didn't seem set on doing anything more at all, then her hands raked down her face and flopped onto the table. She released a heavy sigh and looked up at Logos with fatigued eyes.

"No," she replied quietly, "no, there's no point. Leave her be."

She then lazily waved at a chair opposite her.

"Sit down if you like, love."

Logos hadn't really planned on staying long, it was curiosity that had seduced him up the stairs but curiosity was one dirty little minx and it only needed to give him another saucy wink for him to take the chair. His Boss returned her pen to its holder and turned to him with chin resting in her hand and eyes heavily lidded, some more hair had slipped from the bun.

"What is wrong with that girl?" She lamented.

Her gunner could do naught but provide slow and futile shrug.

"I mean, did you see that girl's arm afterwards? It was red raw! What am I meant to say to her parents? And now, they don't want Mélodie in the same classroom as her! That's another one, I mean can you blame them! Soon Mélodie will have to be tutored all by herself, _again_! I thought she would have grown out of this by now. When will it end?"

She thumped back in her chair, eyes squeezed closed in frustration and collar of her gown clasped in both hands up over her mouth. Logos was glad it wasn't a pillow, he suspected if so she might have been screaming into it.

He mused on his Boss's plight. Mélodie, since, well since she was born in fact, had always been tenacious, stubborn, hot-headed and fiery – she was most assuredly her mother's daughter. She tested every limit, pushed every button; her first learned word was 'No' for Aeon's sake. If she wasn't pulling hair she was making a mess, if she wasn't perfecting her 'back-chat' she was causing destruction, if she wasn't shirking chores she was being a plain old pain in the backside. Logos recalled this one event when she was three, she'd given her nanny the slip, escaped the bathtub and ran, cattle-walling, around the Château covered in nothing but suds she'd fashioned into an array of ludicrous facial hair. He shuddered.

"Any progress on the Academy?" He asked.

"No," Leblanc lowered the fluffy collar, "I've tried but Mélodie just isn't having any of it. I don't know what to do."

Leblanc had hoped to send her daughter to the Academy in Bevelle when she was of age. Most of the younger generation of the Syndicate were educated on site but a significant number of parents also elected to send their children elsewhere, with the Bevellian Academy being particularly popular. She had thought it would do Mélodie a world of good, she would receive some of best education Spira had to offer, she would be able to mingle with other children (well, other children that weren't effectively underlings) and she would be able to have more of a life outside the Château. In Mélodie's eyes, however, it was just a way to ship her out. Leblanc had even suggested Mélodie wouldn't have to stay there full time, she could do weekly boarding and come back to Gagazet on the weekends but no, Mélodie put her foot down. School was 'dumb' (like many things) and the last place she wanted to go was a place that was a whole world of school, that wasn't freedom, she decided, it was just a slightly different cell. Mélodie had meant to attend the school nearly two years ago but Leblanc just could not coax her to go. _I bet the High Summoner didn't have this sort of backlash with her children,_ Leblanc thought, _...Little Miss Perfect._

She slid open a drawer and retrieved a pile of letters. She flicked through them until she uncovered the one she wanted, the envelope had already been torn open, she tugged out the paper within and gestured it towards her comrade.

"Look." She said simply.

Logos took up the letter and allowed his eyes to scan its contents, it was a report document signed off by Mélodie's tutors. Dire would have been a gross understatement.

"Her schoolwork is really suffering." Leblanc clarified. "They say she might have to repeat the curriculum!"

"Hmm." He responded, trying hard to feign interest.

It was at this point, when he slid the letter back onto the desktop, that he spotted another envelope. This one was unopened and embellished with the crest of The Spiran Council. It would be from The Mevyn (it hadn't been his title in years but old habits die hard). However, Nooj never ever sent Leblanc personal mail, any message he sent had always been churned through a few layers of administration before going postal. Logos speculated they probably had something really obnoxious at the bottom like, _'Sincerely, The High Councilor Nooj. Dictated but not read'_.

"Sooo, when is The Mevyn coming?" Oh Logos, you do like to live dangerously.

"In two weeks," Leblanc replied miserably, he was quite surprised he had received a response at all. "Though I haven't heard anything, no date, no time, he hasn't said how long he's going to take her for. Ugh, if he gets waylaid again Mélodie is going to be -."

She cut herself short, spying the familiar emblem out of the corner of her eye. She snatched up the envelope quickly, realising she had probably divulged too much.

An uneasy silence fell over the office, it was making Logos's throat feel quite dry. He would have been lying if he were to say he hadn't noticed a significant shift in Leblanc and Nooj's relationship as of late. That is if you could ever have called it a 'relationship'. The circumstances surrounding Mélodie's birth and upbringing were, in the politest sense, hazy. One day she wasn't and then suddenly she was, Nooj and Leblanc had never officially been together...well, they had had to have been 'together' at some point, obviously, but – Logos didn't like to think about it for too long. His daughter was one of the few areas of his life where Nooj appeared to be all talk and no action. When it was revealed to him he would have an heir The Mevyn was overjoyed, in that very atypical Nooj like manner where he'd speak those words but his face would have no discernible expression whatsoever, and whenever he spoke about Mélodie it was always highly, though also a bit vague. However, it was rare he was ever physically present for any of the milestone events of her life. When he was he was charming enough, with ambiguous intrigue into her hobbies and dubious pats on the head, but it didn't really make up for the fact that his attendance was so uncommon that when he did show his face everyone would start coming to the conclusion that he must be dying or something equally as morbid. He'd missed birthdays, recitals, public children's holidays - now he thought about it, Logos still wasn't sure whether Nooj had ever made it to the actual birth!

In spite of all this though, Leblanc was always committed to the belief that Nooj was a great father and loved Mélodie very much, and in turn, loved her very much; they were a family. Logos somewhat hated to admit he was not so convinced. Regardless of all the years of being thoroughly 'messed about' by the man, Leblanc still revered The Mevyn and encouraged her little girl to do the same. When Mélodie was born the great bronzed statue The Boss had owned of Nooj had been relocated to their child's room so she wouldn't miss her 'daddy'. It didn't last long however as Mélodie had shrieked and cried, indicating it was 'scary', that had given Logos a good chuckle. Saying that, the statue was never returned to Leblanc's chambers, he didn't actually know where it was now.

Leblanc had always relished Nooj's infrequent visits to the Château but he hadn't made it up to Gagazet once in the last two years, on the flip side Mélodie had been sent to Mushroom Rock on three occasions in the same amount of time. This is where things had deviated from their norm because Leblanc had always taken Mélodie herself, always. If there was a chance she would see Nooj she was there without fail. The last two visits, however, she had been indifferent, almost abhorrent, and had sent Logos to accompany her daughter instead. He'd despised every second of it, he never wanted to spend a moment longer with the monster than was necessary and now he was stuck on a road trip with her. He nearly, Farplane forbid, called the Gullwings!

Something wasn't right. This thing between Nooj and Leblanc, whatever it was, this dynamic? Was fracturing, and Logos was really struggling to determine whether this was a good or a bad thing.

He coughed, stirring himself from his train of thought.

"Perhaps she's a tad bored?" He ventured, recalling Mélodie's gripes in the library. "A change of scenery may be in order? The weather probably isn't helping, keeping her cooped up indoors."

"She won't go to the Academy, I just told you." Leblanc unintentionally snapped, exhaustion getting to her.

"Well, I mean, does it have to be the Academy. Let her run around the training ground, or take her to that ghastly theme park she goes on about, that will burn off some of her energy."

"The training ground!" Leblanc squawked. "Oh no, no no no. What if she gets hurt? Mélodie is a liability enough without a pointy object in her hands. And take her to the other islands?" She bit her lip nervously. "I-I just don't think she's ready. She's still so little, if something happened to her...I can't keep my eyes on her all the time. No, it's much safer for her in the Château."

Logos subtly gave his eyes a roll. There was some truth in it, but Mélodie's safety really wasn't the concern, it was other people's. Mélodie had never properly gotten herself hurt, she seemed to expertly avoid it, often by using another body as a human shield. She had had a particularly bad case of the cold-pox when she was a toddler though, all children get it in the colder climates but Mélodie just had to be the most dramatic even at that. He remembered how Leblanc had been unbearable (a word he did not adopt lightly when describing his boss), she had fretted and fussed, coddling the girl to suffocation. She had called every specialist and requested every remedy but had somehow, despite all professional advice, still been too anxious to accept that maybe Mélodie would just get better on her own. Leblanc regarded Mélodie as if she were made of china, Logos thought she was more likely to be made of frogs, snails and puppy-dog tails.

"I'm sure it will be fine." I mean, what was he meant to bloody say? "It's probably just a phase, she'll grow out of it. And think of it this way, The Mevyn will be here in a fortnight and she'll get that change of scenery."

Leblanc looked up from where she too had been staring into space.

"Yes, yes I supposed you're right, love."

She pushed the chair back and stood up, Logos followed haphazardly, recognising his cue to get out.

"Nooj will be here in a fortnight," she echoed, wringing her hands a bit, "and Mélodie will be happier."

* * *

"I knew it." Mélodie answered frankly, "I just knew it."

Goons were to-ing and fro-ing across the main hall, backs and arms loaded with crates and equipment. There had been a huge find in the northern island, one of the handsomest hauls ever if the report was to be believed. Leblanc was heading out within the hour, she had to see this for herself, it could solve all the Syndicate's problems and bring them up to speed with the ever-pressing demand. But first, she had to break some news to her daughter, and she was bracing for the fallout.

"He is so very sorry, Mélodie but -"

"I knew he wouldn't come." Mélodie cut her mother off, kicking at the marbled flooring.

"Now now, he didn't say he wasn't coming at all -if you'll let me finish- he just has to come later. Something came up and he told me he'll make contact in the next few weeks to rearrange."

"When something else will 'come up' and he'll cancel again! It's the same old story."

"He promises it will be soon."

"Promises? Huh, that means nothing, he's always breaking promises!"

"Keep your voice down Mélodie."

Some lackey ears had begun to perk at the rising volume and a gaggle of Goon-ling children were peaking through the railings of the grand limestone staircase at the other end of the hall.

"Look, I'm sorry this has happened, I know you wanted to see your daddy and you're upset-"

"Upset? Upset! I'm not upset, I'm angry!"

"Sssh!"

"He doesn't care, he doesn't give a _damn_ about me!"

"Mélodie!" Leblanc's feathers were almost audibly ruffling. "Watch your mouth!"

"And what? I just have to sit, at home, being a 'good girl' and be bored. Hm? Seen but not heard? Even you said that this trip wasn't dangerous, that it was just routine, then why can't I go with you?"

"This is business, it's not a children's day out Mélodie."

"Well, I'm not a child! I want to get out of this stupid place and do something! I can fight, you've seen me fight; I can look after myself, you don't have to watch me! But no, you don't take me anywhere and neither does dad!"

Leblanc's expression was gradually turning more steely. The children behind the banister began to curl back and Goons were now appearing much more focused on looking at the floor or at what they were carrying than the domestic.

"Why don't you just lock me in a tower!"

"Mélodie, I don't want to hear any more. I've told you what your daddy said and-"

"And you just keep making excuses for him! You don't stick up for me at all! I told you, I told you he wasn't going to come, that he never comes to see me, and you wouldn't listen. _You_ don't give a _damn_ about me!"

"Mélodie."

"And dad never sees you either so, guess what, he doesn't give a _damn_ about you either!"

"I said enough Mélodie!"

The room fell silent.

All motion had stopped. The Goons stood huddled by the door, hoping that maybe teleportation powers would suddenly and impossibly be realised and they would materialise on the other side of it with a loud 'pop'. The children tucked behind the banister had also scattered clumsily.

"You don't want to be a child anymore?" Leblanc's voice could have sliced a diamond. "Fine. Then it is time you realised that not everything revolves around you. Your father, and I have a great deal of duty to more than just you and the sooner you appreciate that the better. Adults, don't have tantrums, they don't get into needless quarrels and they certainly don't expect others to always be at their beck and call."

She turned on her heel and the action of a curt nod and a flick of her wrist suddenly made the Goons scuttle over one another to get out of the door. She eventually stepped onto the threshold herself, before looking over her shoulder at her daughter with piercing eyes.

"I will be away for two days, take some responsibility for yourself and think long and hard about what it means to be an adult. Oh and," She had been about to leave when a thought caught her. "If you want to get out of this _stupid_ place so badly then you can go to the Academy in the Spring."

With that, the long tail of her fur-trimmed coat whisked away into the snow and the door was slammed shut.

Tears burned in Mélodie's eyes.

"I hate this." She murmured quietly. "I hate all of this."

She spun around and flew to her room.

* * *

Logos's pen scrawled something on the parchment to his right whilst his other hand reached for a glass of wine to his left. He nearly knocked the bloody thing clean over since his eyes were fixed on the glowing map in front of him, noting co-ordinates and sphere waves. Smoke slithered up from the ashtray near his elbow, filling his office with a foggy aura.

He had been told to stay put this time and take charge of the Château; Ormi was taking this one with the Boss. It made sense, he wasn't far, he could meet Leblanc there. The huskier half of the duo still resided at the Château, and still very much worked for the Syndicate, but any morsel of free time he had now he spent in the small western isles, with Kiku. It had been, let's see, two years now of them...'courting'? Is that what you call it? Logos had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach that the arrival of a 'Save the Date' card may be looming over the horizon. Not that he didn't like Kiku, not at all, he actually found her to be quite the surprise. Stunned was an understatement, she was charming, fairly pretty (though perhaps a bit on the buxom side for Logos's taste) and, to the gunner's awe, markedly witty. Most shocking of all was that she appeared to be completely and utterly sane! When she had waved farewell at the end of a brief stay at the Château last summer even Logos couldn't allow his usually sour camaraderie to halt him shaking Ormi's beefy hand. Though he did also whisper, 'How in Spira did you manage that?'

This mass sphere find had come out of left field, while Ormi was away, but he would probably ask to hop a ride on the Celsius from the isles up to where the Syndicate was mining. He always got on better with that Al Bhed girl and her motley Gullwing gang than the Boss or his comrade.

A brisk knock sounded at the door and before Logos could swallow his wine and give permission for entry the door was pitched open and a young but matronly Fem-Goon straddled the threshold.

"Have you seen Mélodie?" She signed, demeanour tired and tousled.

He placed down his pitifully empty glass, eyes darting briefly to the sideboard, he didn't think he had another bottle, blast.

"No, why would I?"

He ruffled up the papers and stuck the idle cigarette in his mouth, trying hard to look important and unavailable.

"No smoking in the Château." Logos grunted in response, she didn't hear and continued, "It's time she had a bath."

"My office, my rules. Anyway, I thought she was meant to be taking care of herself now, after her little spat earlier."

The Château had garnered a more sullen tone since that morning, with the odd hushed whisper from children, and even some Goons, exchanging rumours. Leblanc and Mélodie rowing was not altogether an uncommon occurrence, but no one had seen Leblanc like _that_ before. Mélodie had not only crossed a line, she had pole-vaulted over it with style. Logos had only heard about it later off one of his batman Goons. He didn't pay it much mind though, if it meant Mélodie was quiet and subdued for the next forty-eight hours all the better for it.

"Yes but she hasn't had a bath in four days."

Logos struggled to hide the flash of disdain on his face and dropped the papers.

"Well, isn't she in her room? She is 'grounded' after all."

Logos didn't understand the concept of 'grounded'. The last place Mélodie should have been allowed to go when she was insolent was her room. It was stuffed with toys and books, a large, soft, veiled bed occupied one end and when she was 'grounded' she essentially got room service. What was not to like? Besides, with Mélodie not allowed to leave the Château at the best of times it hardly deprived her of anything at all.

"Don't you think that was the first place we looked?"

"The library?" He decided to ignore the snipe. "She has a little spot at the back she likes to hide in."

"No, not there."

"The kitchen?"

"Nope."

"The dining hall?"

"Na-ah."

"Hiding in the dorms?"

"Logos." The Fem-Goon swept a few stray hairs from her forehead. "We've looked everywhere. You know we're desperate when we think _you_ might be harbouring her. Of all the people."

Logos sat back, hands in his lap with fingers knitted together, looking up at the ceiling with a bored request for divine intervention. After a moment, he took the cigarette out of his mouth with his thumb and index finger, smoke snaked up to the plastering.

"The Boss's room?"

The Fem-Goon took pause for thought.

"Hmm, maybe."

"Well, there you go, off you trot."

He waved his hand dismissively and began to toil over the papers again, cigarette relocated to his lips.

"Logos."

"What?" He replied, peeved.

"It's locked."

Leblanc always locked her door when she was away now. All the critical documents and essential equipment could be found either in the storage areas, the library or the security hold. There wasn't any reason for anyone to require access to her office and bedchamber, especially if she was only gone for a short jaunt. There were three keys, one always on Leblanc's person, another was for Mélodie so she could come and go for obvious reasons. The third would be bestowed upon the Syndicate member overseeing the Château in her absence, in case of emergency, so either Ormi or Logos, usually Logos.

"Oh for the love of Yevon." Logos grumbled. Stamping out his cigarette into the teaming ashtray and sliding his chair back.

He crossed in front of his desk and to the door, picking through a key ring he had unclipped from his belt.

"I was very busy you know." He bit in a tone that sounded only half committed to the words.

"Oh, bull-crap." The Fem-Goon retorted hotly, shoving him through the door.

The door lock to Leblanc's room unlatched with a pleasing click before inching open cautiously. The lights were out and the chamber had a lonely feel to it. The door then calmly swung open further so two silhouettes stood against the dull glow of the corridor.

"Mélodie?" The Fem-Goon whispered, creeping forward into the darkness, "Mélodie?"

Logos gave an annoyed sigh and flicked on the lights, causing the Fem-Goon to start from the wild flash.

"Mélodie come out, we know you're in here." He commanded.

Funny. The room looked untouched. The papers on the desk were still organised into neat piles, stationary still obediently in its pots, no drawers were hanging open, no cabinets ajar, no crumbs on the floor, the curtained lined glass doors to the bedchamber were still firmly closed...not even a throw pillow out of place. This was very peculiar, Mélodie always left a train of discord in her wake.

"Mélodie?" The Fem-Goon was now peaking uselessly under the desk.

Logos's sharp eyes traced the corners of the office suspiciously, there had to be a clue somewhere. She had to be in here, Mélodie never remembered to lock the door when she left, she only ever locked it from the inside to stop people coming after her, or worse, to make them come harass him.

"Mélodie," he spoke clearly, "I am going to count to three and if you don't show yourself before I am done then there will be Hell to pay."

"No bad words!" The Fem-Goon scolded from behind the couch.

"Shut up," Logos hissed back. "One...two..." the room remained still, "two and a half...oh! That's it, thr-!"

He'd spotted it. The little concentrated trail of chaos. It started at one of the rococo chairs, which was ever so slightly off canter, and trickled down to an ugly white streak carved into the marble floor from where someone had awkwardly been pushing it. The streak ended at the base of the high sideboard on the right of the room, there was a chip in the finely polished top where the ornate crest of the chair had been 'thwacked' into it. As Logos skulked round to the chair he now discovered a big messy boot print on the embroidered seat, another could be found on top of the sideboard and several more in between suggesting signs of a clumsy struggle. Smaller trinkets and instruments that adorned the sideboard were tipped over sadly and a case of lenses, made for sextants, had clattered to the floor, fortunately, none were broken. His eyes continued to prowl along the sideboard's destruction-laden mahogany surface until he stopped halfway, the other end was still in order. Where the devil could she have gone from here? His eyes darted back and forth trying to deduce, before they slowly floated up. Above were two little inclined metal hooks and an empty, triangle-shaped slot etched into the wall.

After a few moments of watching Logos stand bolt still, glaring at the stonework, the Fem-Goon sidled over to him. She glimpsed over his shoulder, head cocked and on tip-toes.

"What's the matter?"

Logos's brow furrowed.

"The Boss didn't take her fan this time."

He closed his eyes and breathed out through his nose.

"Bugger."

* * *

Howls and bellows bounced against the icy cliffs of the mountain. The snow flurried in great conical formations in the mid-winter cyclone and the sky was churning with the stinging chill. To one side of a ravine, half way down and nearing waist deep in snow, was a little girl. She was leaning into the growling boreal gusts, the fur tipped cape of her coat whipped by the wind. One of her stubby mitted hands was clutching at her fuzzy collar and desperately fighting to keep her hood up, the other was dragging a long, red and spiked device in the sleet behind her.

 _I'll show them_ , Mélodie thought, _I'll show all of them, I can take care of myself, I don't need anyone_. If no one was going to take her on a mission she would take matters into her own hands and go on one herself. She would journey out and return in one piece, slaying any fiend, foe or flan in her path, maybe she would even bring back a sphere, yes, a sphere to overshadow all the rest. Or maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't go home at all. Yes! Screw all that and good riddance to bad rubbish! Like heck would she be sent to the Academy and no one cared about her at home anyway, no one gave a _damn_ about her!

"Damn." She spat through her chattering teeth. "Damn, damn, damn...damn. Damn!"

She giggled to herself and pranced about (though the snow gave more of the impression of someone trying to escape a tar pit) and sung out a long jolly list of more unrepeatables.

A little ways further down into the belly of the ravine was another figure, much taller, climbing at speed and altogether looking very, very, very displeased. Logos had left the Château the instant they had realised Mélodie was gone, all whilst explosively cursing with such passion it would have made a Luca fishwife blush.

"Should I inform The Boss?" The Fem-Goon had fretted.

"Fuck no!" Logos had snapped back. "She'll go ballistic!"

"But what if something terrible has happened to her?"

 _Oh...what a shame that would be._

"What if she's been kidnapped?"

 _Who in their right minds would want to kidnap_ that _?_

"What if she's hurt!"

"Oh calm down woman!" Logos felt a migraine pecking. "Look, she's barely a foot taller than the snow out there, she can't have gone far."

He'd wrapped his wool cloak around his mandarin collar and epaulette crowned shoulders before lazily tightening the buckles on the cowl neck – Leblanc's taste in uniform was always overstated if not awkward.

"If it makes you feel any better, if I'm not back in two hours, _then_ you can contact The Boss, alright?"

He'd given his hips a habitual pat, no need, he was never without his pistols.

"I'd say," He'd mulled as he opened the main doors, snowflakes rushing in out of the cold, "100gil I'll be back in thirty minutes?"

The Fem-Goon hadn't liked that very much. She had then begun ranting something unfavourable about gambling but Logos hadn't hung around to listen to the whole thing.

Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing how long he had been. His initial confidence, that he would walk ten feet, round a corner and find a fur-coat-clad munchkin whom to hoist home, was rapidly evaporating. He was starting to regret not accumulating a search party, how could something so small and so inept move so fast? Perhaps something bad had happened to her, perhaps she was hurt or kidnapped. An amusing little picture materialised in his mind of Mélodie comically toppling off the side of the ravine, he simpered a bit, until he realised the next image would be a little girl lying face down in the snow – on no, he didn't like that. In fact, the snow was falling so thick and fast that, maybe, there wouldn't be a body at all, she would be drowned in the white. He was feeling a bit queasy now.

"Mélodie!" He cried out, not giving much heed to potential avalanches.

Only his cloak flapping in the rolling wind was polite enough to give a response.

"Mélodie! It's freezing out here, come home!" Still nothing. "Brat." He muttered.

He continued to wade up the steep incline of the ravine, leather gaiters doing zip all to protect his trousers. He knew he couldn't be far off the top now, where the icy, ruin pocked peak of Gagazet began to emerge.

What's that sound?

"Damn, damn, damn, damn, Hell, damn, Hell, Bugger, Sod, Fu-"

He'd know that voice anywhere. He'd also know that furry, tailed hood anywhere, including that silly little pom-pom that bobbed on the end of it.

"I wasn't aware you had such an extensive vocabulary." Logos drawled, victorious.

The hood, on the ledge above, gave off an alarmed 'eek' and shot down into the snow, pom-pom following. The gunner began to pad softly up the slope, positively radiating all the cunning of a fox that solved murders on the weekends.

"The 'jig', if you will little lady, is up." He declared. "Come home."

Suddenly, snow sputtered up from the ledge and a head, very similar in appearance to an enraged chipmunk, popped out, it's furry features ruffling in the elements.

"No." It spoke defiantly.

Logos could do naught but snigger at the absurdity.

"No? Mélodie, I really don't think you are in any position for negotiations. That wasn't a request." Logos warned. "Come home _now_."

There was a low crunch as his boot took another step up the slope. Mélodie flinched.

"Or what? Squinty!"

As if on cue, Logos's eyes drew a touch thinner.

"Or you will be in a whole new world of trouble."

"Yeah, right." Melodie chuckled, Logos didn't much care for the cocky tone in her voice. "Face it, slim, you can't touch me."

Logos's face began to twist.

"If I come home your big, oh-so-scary, _world of trouble_ will just be ratting me out to mum. Who will just ground me, again, like it matters. Oh no! I'll be on my own! So? I'm on my own out here but at least I get to do what I want."

"Mélodie," The tall man began wearily, "you are wasting your breath on me. You can wail about how life isn't fair until you are blue in the face. I am just here to do my job."

"Tell me what else is new!" She fumed. "Figures anyway, bet you'd be full of it if I left. You'd love it if I just disappeared!"

 _Oh, here she goes._

"It seems everyone would be better off if I was gone and I _damn_ sure would be better off without all of you! You just hold me back!"

"Oh boo hoo." He mocked.

"Face it, you're not even out here for me! I'm not stupid you know, you don't care about me! You don't give me a second thought. You're out here so you can be all smug when mum gets back."

Mélodie crossed her arms, face a picture haughty triumph.

"Kiss ass!"

The cold air was biting and the wind seemed to have aroused for an encore no one requested. Logos could feel a bit of friction between his teeth and the side of his lip curling.

"See here, missy, you may think you have everyone wrapped around your little finger but out here you are dealing with the wrong man. I've been to Hell and back at least once, spoilt little urchins don't phase me. You're half right, I don't care about you. If it were up to me I'd let you chill to the bone out here, we might actually get some peace and bloody quiet, but what I do care about is getting paid this month." He took another step. "I am not going to say it again, come home this ins-"

Mélodie sprung up to her full height, a terrifying three foot eleven.

"You're not the boss of me!"

The gunner's finger snapped towards her with a snarl.

"Don't push it, Mélodie."

"What are you going to do about it, stretch!"

"I'll tell you what I am going to do about it," Logos's seethed, "so help me, when I get my hands on you I'll drag you to the Academy myself, tonight!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah!"

They leered at each other in a fury charged standoff, gums bearing and faces hot, shoulders tight and breath foaming.

"Well snitch," Mélodie's words were laced with indignation, "you'll have to catch me first."

A snowball struck Logos square in the face with such brute force it could have downed a Zu. He toppled back a bit with a vehement outburst and a handful of bad words. Logos would later tell himself that he was just caught off guard but in reality, he had to triple check his nose wasn't broken.

"Why you little-!"

He lunged over the ledge with the velocity of a striking viper but only icy white vapour was found clutched in his claw. Logos peered up just in time to see that taunting pom-pom whip round a corner of the cliff. With a rumble emitting from his throat, he kicked off from the snow and careened round the bend, boots thundering on the rock and cloak billowing behind him like wings.

"Come back here!" He roared.

Mélodie was up ahead, her own bulky boots at full pelt and still climbing. Logos dashed after but quickly discovered something rather disconcerting when he nearly became uncomfortably intimate with the ground. He faltered and his arm sprung out to snatch the cliff side. Steadying himself, he saw laid out in front of him were coiling sheets of scored ice. His eyes turned to Mélodie and, just as he thought he couldn't get any angrier, saw she was no longer travelling at an amusing waddle, she was soaring.

"What's the matter, lanky?" She chaffed. "Afraid I'll give you the _slip_?"

She laughed raucously as she sped ahead, her legs whirring with furious little spurts and then her whole body uncoiling like a spring to launch forward, she was even going uphill! Logos bitterly lamented not investing in cleats.

As she whizzed over the lip above with a 'Smell ya later!', the gunner found himself effectively marooned. There was only one thing he could do, and he stole an anxious glance over his shoulder to check no one was watching him before doing it. He shuffled, but he hoped he shuffled with dignity, he actually did it with such burning, visceral wrath it looked like he was trying to start a fire with his shoes. His hands clutched at the scabrous cliff face, scouring for pockets and jugs to use as handhelds.

Some painful minutes, and a couple of close calls, later he managed to traverse the steely bank and alight to where he had last spied Mélodie. As to be expected she was nowhere in sight. _The dirty little devil must have made a break for it,_ he thought. Through the haze of white he could just etch out the bevelled surfaces of columns a little ways higher, here on this level the terrain was unbalanced, craggy and the frost didn't seem to lay as thick. Jagged black rocks jutted up from white blankets like limpets and he thought he could also make out the sound of water somewhere, as well as the oddly familiar musky smell of old Fayth. But still no Mélodie, he pondered for a moment.

"Marco!"

Crushing silence. He had no idea why he thought that might work.

He crept forward tentatively, the snow making light chomping noises with each pace. The wind continued to beat down and Logos now saw that he stood on a broad mantle to one side of the mountain. He also saw, while prowling carefully about the rocks, a strange golden sparkle in several of their glazed surfaces. There was the sound of leathery wings hammering against the air and instinctively he ducked behind one of the arms of the outcrop. It was a faint chittering that tempted Logos to peek around the stone.

Mounted on the white canvas of the sky, like a trio of gross angels, were the unmistakable forms of three large, and probably hungry, Grim Gazes. Their wings lapped against the flecks of snow, jaws dribbling and unyielding golden and sticky eyes scanning the ground like spotlights. Logos's hand traced down to the revolver on his hip, but he knew there was no reason to fight if he didn't have it. His eyes skimmed the mantle sharply before settling on a prominent fissure part way up the cliff face, he followed it to the base where he found that it widened out to form an opening in the stone wall. He hoped it would lead to a passageway, but as all well and good as this was it still didn't answer a more burning predicament, where the Hell was Mél-

Another snowball pounded Logos in the back of the head.

"Ha!"

Logos whirled round and his eyes widened in horror. Mélodie was perched triumphantly on top of one of the boulders intervening between himself and the Grim Gazes. Her silhouette stood bold against the paling light of the mountain sky, her hood was down and her wild, thick hair in its usual crowning plait (though much messier than the norm, she had clearly done it herself this time) flitted against the violent breeze. Her ribbon was also nowhere to be seen, typical. However, these features were mute to Logos as he focused on the one and only attribute that was most concerning to him, her back was to the fiends, and their eyes were swivelling towards her.

"Nice camo, dipshit!"

Logos waggled his hand frantically about his throat.

"Shut up!" He only mouthed.

The Grim Gazes were turning now, drool drizzling from between their teeth and onto the stone.

"You're such a moron, you really think I couldn't see you there?"

"Mélodie!" He rasped, barely audible.

She placed her hands on the waistband of her coat.

"So, what? You a coward now or something?"

The Grim Gazes were looming ever closer, their mouths now agape and eyes bulging ravenously.

"Mélodie, you idiot! For once shut your fat mouth!"

One of the girl's eyebrows raised and she cocked her head. She had noticed he was whispering but she didn't know why, and now she observed how his pupils were tiny (well more so than usual) and panic-stricken. He was also waving his hands around in bizarre, jittery little motions. He was thoroughly creeping her out.

"Wh-what?" She garbled. "Why are you being so weird?"

All of a sudden she felt something hot and moist on the back of her neck.

"Eeeow, what's that sme-?"

Mélodie's head spun round to find herself less than finger's width away from a huge, ghastly, syrupy eye. She screamed, but only for a second before she was stunned silent.

There was a blinding flash and deafening bang and within a single blink of that gooey eye the Grim Gaze had burst into a squall of blood and purulence. Mélodie was left totally gobsmacked, though luckily not in the same place. Something had snatched the waistband of her coat at the exact moment of detention and yanked her backward, she only had a small glob of entrails on the fur of her collar and was far too flabbergasted to even notice it.

The other two Grim Gazes screeched in a pother of terror and enmity. Mélodie, whose ears were ringing, was wallowing in the snow. Her eyes turned skyward blearily to see Logos standing tall with arm outstretched, the barrel of his revolver smoking. One of the Grim Gazes began to thrash its wings as the other's undulating pupil shrunk to a needle-point. There was a noise like someone running fingernails on a chalkboard and an awful smell, like burning hair.

Mélodie could just hear Logos mutter 'Shit!' before she was nabbed again and thrown behind a rock with the gunner in tow. A long, sharp javelin of energy sliced through where they had just been standing and the ice was now steaming.

"Look what you did!" Logos jeered.

"Well, I didn't know!"

"How could you not? Giant winged eyeballs are fairly difficult to miss!"

"Whatever, at least I wasn't hiding!"

"Hiding?"

There was another vulgar shriek behind them, warning of a second impending strike.

"You seemed to take one of them down easy, so why you hiding? You scared!"

"Oh stick your pom-pom in it!"

The horrid thresh of wings was building.

"These messy things are a waste of bullets." He pointed towards the passage mouth in the cliff. "We'll wait it out in there."

Again the gunslinger seized the child's coat belt and hoisted her like an old suitcase towards the crevice. He skidded through the maze of rocks expertly, the lop of wings growing faster and louder, before sliding into the passageway with such accuracy it was like he was made to fit. Another pike of roasting hot light pierced into the darkness after them forcing Logos to slam his body against the rock wall, clutching Mélodie flush against him.

Shadows of the Grim Gazes flickered about the cave interior as they desperately tried to break through, their foiled squawks echoing up from their grimy gullets. They hustled and clashed about the crack like crows to a corpse.

"Running away now, huh?" Mélodie barked. "Don't you dare think I'll let you take me to the Academy now! Next chance I get I'm gon-!" A gloved hand was snapped over her mouth.

"Sssshut up." Logos hissed. "If we stay still, and quiet, they'll leave."

Indeed he was right, and with perturbing punctuality too, after only a few fleeting moments the Grim Gazes gave a few feeble caws and then skittered away. Logos caught his breath then slowly lowered his hand from Mélodie's mouth, but daren't to release the one grasping her shoulder lest she made a bid for freedom.

"Pathetic," she huffed, "I don't know why you did that, I could have taken them."

She gave her mother's fan a little flick.

"Yeah, right." Logos muttered, still looking at where the Grim Gazes had just scattered, thinking. He tugged at Mélodie's coat and the little girl's feet came away from the floor for a moment. "Right, time to get you back-."

There was a noise. A horrible noise. A deep, throaty, baritone rumble, but quiet, just nipping at their eardrums. It resonated from their backs, like the rock was yawning. Logos pulled Mélodie close again. There was a trill of cracking and, almost hollow sounding, 'clonking' tones as if someone was playing a wonky xylophone. There was shifting and groaning and little snaps and ticks from the stone. It stopped, and all hush was resumed. Faint drips from the passage's throat oscillated around them innocently, and the wind could be heard calling again.

"W-what-what was tha-?"

The sing of sabres and an earth-shattering crash shook the foundations of the cave. Five ruthless, stained claws now encased them like a cage. Logos swallowed and, with tortured hesitation, turned his head upward. There was a grisly rattle of creaking bone and another head emerged from the darkness above to greet him, a head decorated in crevices and scars, with crowning jagged horns, no nose, rotted fangs and breath like death. He stared into the intense blue eyes and pinned grinning maw of a Monolith.

Out of the frying pan into the fire? Try out of the frying pan into the sun!

The mighty claw unlocked from the rock and rose into the air again.

"Go! Go!"

Yet again Mélodie was hoisted into the air, she would have complained about being repeatedly treated like a sack of potatoes if this was any other circumstance. The gunner sprinted forward just as the blades swept about in a crescent, right through where they had just been held hostage.

The Monolith groaned when it saw there was no fresh blood on its talons. Dust rose from its base and it staggered forward with alarming dexterity, roaring in fervent rage, riled from its rude awakening. Another ear-splitting 'bang' blared and the ugly jaw clamped shut with a snap, a couple of yellowed teeth pinged onto the stone. Its gruesome skull shook a bit with the pain before rounding back with a gurgle. Logos held his revolver with a grip that could break a man's arm, sweat beginning to bead on his brow. This thing was huge, it towered over him, a feat, and its eyes felt like they burned into his very soul. Was it hungry? Did it even eat?

Its great mouth unhinged and torrid air swarmed them as it bellowed once more. Logos's finger twitched against the trigger. The barbed paw came again, spurred digits hurtling through the moist cave air. The gunner could see his murky reflection in them they were so close. Mélodie, who had her fingers in her ears, was lobbed away behind a boulder. There was a sudden deep sting against Logos's shoulder and the side of his face, the sharpened tips had caught him.

He could hear the beast holler in his ears, the awful scraping noise of metal dragging against the stone. The Monolith hobbled about, teeth chattering and head flicking between its two victims. Logos took that moment, he darted under its bony appendage and dispatched another shell into the back of its slab. It occurred to Logos that, although the Monolith was disturbingly quick, it still struggled considerably with turning. It seemed to know this itself as, although it groused at the wound, it decided to invest more in it's smaller prey. Mélodie, her mother's fan stuck into her waistband, was grappling desperately between the stalagmites. When she had hit the ground she had landed in a puddle of bitter, white cold water, her mittens soaked and her sodden boots sliding on the rock. That dirty claw dug into the cave base and the Monolith dragged itself closer to her.

Those eyes of piercing blue began to glow all the more and its throat burbled and rippled. Mélodie could hear a sound like a damp sand shifting underfoot and didn't dare to turn back to see what it was. Puffs of chalky smoke emitted from the Monolith's hollow nostrils, ears, and eye sockets. The sound was getting louder now, like seashells being slowly crushed with a metal press. Mélodie floundered on the rubble, her boot slipped and a jutted crag caught her a crack on the chin. The foaming maw behind her creaked open.

Logos frantically fumbled at the supply pouch on his belt and released a high-pitched whistle from between his lips.

"Hey, bone-bag!" He called out to the now awkwardly rounding fiend. "Why not pick on someone a bit closer to your own size!"

As if taken as a cue a thick, grey, swirling plume belched from the Monolith's throat. Logos rolled to his side and skidded along the floor, only missing the breath by a mere shadow's width. Mélodie, still bumbling over the rock formations with shivering hands, looked round just in time to catch a stolen glance from the gunner. He didn't call out to her, he didn't motion to her at all but his eyes told her all she needed to know, she needed was to run and hide.

There was a click and a soft metallic clatter as a grenade was pelted at the Monolith, murky vapour still spilling from its facial orifices. For a few seconds, it all seemed rather unspectacular. Then, when the suspense was at its peak, there came a deep, echoing clap. Mélodie coughed and rasped as smoke slithered through the cave, debris raining from the ceiling. She clambered through the frosty stone, boots squelching from the damp, and bolted down a tunnel to her right.

A tall, slender figure in the mass of fumes stood still and brazen, a gloved hand to its nose and mouth, keen eyes searching for movement in the melting smog. He heard the scrape of stone on stone and widened his stance just a bit.

Suddenly, a dust-coated cranium sprung from the mist, that hot, stinking breath hitting Logos like a mallet. A cone of sparks shot upward and a bullet pierced the fiend's upper jaw.

"Come on then you great tombstone," he clicked the hammer of his revolver back, "let's dance!"

He sped deeper into the cave, the Monolith accepting the challenge, pulling a great wedge of rock from the wall as it advanced. Logos hurtled through the catacombs, zig-zagging between stalagmites and cutting quick turns to make the journey as laborious as possible for his pursuer. The great clamping claw was chomping into the cave roof and being used to swing the Monolith in great arcs but the creature was still fairly outmatched by such a nimble opponent.

The gunner's boots pummelled against the gravel, picking up the pace as the great ingot of the Monolith loped towards him. Peddles and dregs cowered out of his path, a fork loomed up out of the foreboding blackness, he slid his weight to the left and scooted down the narrower of the two options. Wrong choice. Almost immediately Logos's body smashed into raw stone, a dead end. He whirled about-face, revolver struck out in front. Thank Yevon, it was too slim for the Monolith. This did nothing to quell its anger however, its talons inching into the crack, scrabbling and scratching at the eroding rock, shaving it off in chunks, it's wild fangs snapping in irritation. It's corpse-laced reek wriggled into the tiny cove and Logos could feel his lunch debating an appearance.

With his gaze anchored to the fiend as it peeled away the stone, one of Logos's jittery hands rummaged at his belt. Despite their clamminess, his fingers managed to extract two small, sharp metallic objects. In that moment, Logos found himself quite surprised that it had taken him until his early thirties to realise you didn't necessarily need a gun to play some miniature, twisted version of Russian Roulette. It was agony but he tore his eyes away from the beast just long enough to catch a glimpse of what he had managed to draw. A bullet of blinding and a bullet of grave circumstance lay in his palm. Lady Luck had decided to show her face tonight after all.

More rock splintered away, the Monolith was nearly up to its knuckles. The gunslinger gave a subtle flourish of his wrist and the barrel of the revolver cracked open. Thick grooves were being dug into the sides of the cove with a horrid grinding noise. He gave the firearm a quick twirl allowing gravity to take the shells within, this was no time for an obsessive-compulsive reload. A giant gnarled wrist was now being wedged into the crevice. He jumbled the bullets between his sweaty and shaking fingers, desperately trying to slide them into the chambers blind. The bony wrist thrust against the stone in aggravation and detritus sprinkled from above. He'd managed to get one bullet loaded, giving it a thankful nudge with his thumb, the other was still bungling in his quavering grasp. The warm, foul, skeletal muzzle rammed itself into the frame of the inlet, gnashing wildly, showering him in spittle, a blue-black tongue the size of a bath towel flopped out. It squirmed and writhed, the beady blue orb of an eye crowned the horizon of its snout.

If Logos did not take this chance he knew he may not get another.

He snapped the chamber shut. His weapon raised, grip now steadfast and true in the comfort of his gun. The little hammer knocked back, trigger squeezed, time almost seemed to slow down. Let's see which bullet made the cut.

The cove was illuminated for but a second, a boom so loud it was almost silent. A beam of mottled and inky sapphire streamed across the space between the combatants. The bullet's blunted spike crushed into the Monolith's eye and suffocated it. A murky film of shadowed darkness swam about its portals like a school of fish.

It's great head swooped upward, yowling in pain, taking most of the cove's doorway with it. Before Logos could bare the gun chamber again to feverishly reload, a hunk of the ceiling dislodged. It hammered down onto the uneven ground and the very rock Logos stood astride broke off in a wedge and catapulted him into the top corner of the cavity. The force of the impact caused, not only a bruised head, battered back and a bitten tongue, but also a shower of wasted bullets from the idly ajar ammo box on the gunner's belt. Logos quickly re-grounded with a thud, feeling an awful crunch in one of his knees, and not taking much care for the shot and pellets that were rolling along the floor, being sucked into every nook and cranny. Somehow he had managed to keep a clinch on his gun. His head was throbbing and vision blurred. Using both hands this time he split the chamber from the revolver and went to load the other bullet. It was gone. He must have let it slip when thrown. His head snapped upward, his hand clutching for the other gun in its holster at his hip.

But he didn't need to. The Monolith had vanished.

* * *

Deeper in the bowels of the cave Mélodie was spelunking, lost. A red raw fist, now ungloved, occasionally wiping at her bleeding chin. She should have been hiding away in a little pocket somewhere but she reasoned with herself that she was an adult now, 'take some responsibility for yourself' her mother had said and that is what she would do. Besides, if something dreadful had befallen the gunner then she could be waiting held up for days. She had heard a ruckus and another blare of a gun around the corner, the problem was she didn't know which corner. The darkness was starting to envelope and bear down on her. Her hand came up to her face and brushed her chin, then her nose, then her chin once more, in her other hand she grasped her mother's fan.

"Logos?" She whispered uselessly. "Logos? Are you there?"

She took a left turn and ambled down another eerie passage. Droplets plopped from the ceiling onto the frigid stone, it made Mélodie flinch despite herself. Her boots, the inner lining still drenched from the initial encounter with cold water, squelched with each step and behind her, she left a patter of soggy footprints.

"Logos?" She tried again, both hands now on the fan. "Logos?"

There was a scraping noise, it was slow and a bit forlorn. Mélodie's ears pricked and she stopped to catch it clearer. Again the hollow grind resounded, to the right. She ducked into a small burrow just about her height and haphazardly descended into what she presumed would be more blackness but instead, there was light! Beautiful blue toned light! It may have been only a feeble bloom but anything was an improvement. She continued to slide down, using the surrounding shell of the tunnel for support, following the noise. The passage was opening up now, a sizeable grotto coming into view at its end. She plonked herself down onto the rubble in order to try and glide faster, the sound growing louder as she approached.

Mélodie trickled out the other end and onto a pile of forgotten dregs, the pebbles clopping against the stone floor as they trailed in behind her. She now found herself in a tall and expansive cavern and nestled in a patch of stalagmite mushrooms. Mélodie batted the dust off her coat and went to get up, mouth opening again to call out for the gunner. She halted. Across from the patch, and stumbling in vain, was the Monolith. Mélodie was poised right in front of it, it's grisly cranium looking straight at her! But it didn't seem to see her. It's clawed arm kept lurching about aimlessly and the skull was making little skittish jerking movements like it was trying to shake off a fly.

A pale and gaping Mélodie eventually unfroze and dove to the ground like she was magnetised. Scuttling on her hands and knees she huddled, panting, against one of the fungi like protrusions of the cave base. There wasn't a chance she could hustle back up the passage she had just come from, it was far too steep. She stole a glance from behind the rock. The Monolith moaned sadly, almost as if it were sobbing, a puddle of dark matter enshrouded its eyes. It was blind. If she could just reach the other side of the grotto she may be able to find a way out, but she had to move with the utmost stealth, silently, and quickly too; the effect would only last so long. Gingerly she pointed one of her legs out to the side, planting it behind another stalagmite, and shifted her weight over, keeping low to the ground.

Mélodie did this again and then again, continuing along the cave floor, intending to circle around the left side of the beast and fly away up another tunnel. When she was confident her motions were undetected she scurried on her hands and knees, biting her lip when a sharp piece of grit would wedge itself into her knee or her palm stabbed by a discarded splint of animal bone. She was now heading uphill slightly, to a higher tier of the cavern where there was a large raised stretch of flowstone and a run of natural pillars. Thankful that she could finally stop crouching and her palms and knees, flecked with spots of blood, could be given some room to breathe, she uncurled and fumbled to stand. The dank sole of her boot failed to catch the slippery surface of the flowstone. Mélodie's chest and arms hit the floor with a thump and a single fat pill of ore bounced downward and emitted an announcing clunk.

The head of the Monolith snapped round, its eyes now unveiled and burning, the blinding effect dwindling. Mélodie scrambled to her feet and pressed herself against one the pillars. She sucked in, holding her breath.

There was a sound of rock biting as sword crowned fingers were thrust into it and the scraping she had heard previously returned. The Monolith's great back dragged across the floor with all the grace of broken, gangrenous foot. If it had had the ability to skulk it would have done so, all the way up to the pillar, where it had zoned in on a peculiar commotion. Mélodie's little body pressed against the crags of the stone, willing herself to evaporate into it. A grotesque purr sounded on her right and to Mélodie's horror, a cratered beak slid into her peripheral view. Its nasal orifices fluttered with a suspicious sniff. It was so close that Mélodie could have reached out and touched it's coarse, pockmarked surface if she was so inclined. It's wheeze ensconced her with vile perfume, a waft of decomposing chocobo with notes of fortnight old stale bread, she could almost taste the tartar on its teeth! Her cheeks were turning pink and her eyes watering, fingernails digging into the pillar, it's spines piercing her back.

Then, with a snort of earthy dust, the maw retracted and slipped out of view. She only relaxed and blew out once she heard the scraping of the Monolith's retreating slab once more. She drank in the crisp, merciful air. Then her nose, still sore from her earlier plash, began to tickle. The ejected dust from the Monolith teased, air rushed up into her nostrils, her eyes screwed shut with that funny crunching noise that crinkles inside your head before,

"Aaaachoooo!"

Mélodie's hands clapped over her mouth and nose. Her head gradually turned to her left. There were teeth. Mélodie could feel all the breath in her body rush out of her mouth and her heart attempted to follow, thumping in her throat. The fangs parted. Her feet felt like they were made of lead and no matter how hard she cajoled she couldn't persuade them to move. An eye, clear as a Besaid lagoon, came into focus. Mélodie babbled a string of odd little blubs and thought she might be sick. Then her feet restored.

She bolted, hurtling along the ridge to her right, moving at such speed the pillars blurred into one mass. Her eyes fluttered and flitted trying to see a way out. She skimmed the walls surrounding the cavern, her tiny legs leaping in wide bounds in a furious effort to keep speed. She caught sight of an escape route, another tunnel, down below, but where the Monolith was. She would have to risk a flurry with the fiend, engage in a risky dance, but she had no choice. Mélodie Leblanc would not die sitting down. She stole a sideways glance behind and wished she hadn't. The pillars to her rear lay in dilapidated piles and the flowstone was decorated with rugged cracks and fissures. A scythe the size of a hover propeller swept across the scene and Mélodie's head whipped forward again. The beast had chased her to the furthest point from the passage. She could do it, she was too quick for it to turn and catch her. She darted to the edge of the ridge and jumped.

Her boots smashed into the ground with a force that made her skeleton jostle in her skin. She kicked off on wobbly legs, head bowed as she zipped under the collagen clad limb with a pelt like she had just gargled rocket fuel. The path to her escape was clear, time for the home run. Her feet barely skimming the floor, her lungs burning, eyes wet and her heartbeat warbling in her neck.

Something else, deep within the folded tissue of her brain, chimed suggestively. It was barely louder than a mouse gasping and had the phonetics of a solitary tap dripping. The niggle of sound bumped against the walls of her mind, like moth at a light bulb.

"Dddddddoooooooooo." It snored.

Neurons in her head began to flare gently, little sparks of energy rippling along them. It almost felt...itchy.

"Ddddddddooooooooooommmmmmm." It knelled again.

Mélodie didn't feel quite all there, it wasn't an out of body experience, in fact she was more in her body than ever, like she was a little operator staring out at the world from behind her corneas. And what she could see was bleak. A convulsing, moiling bog of a colour she didn't think even existed.

"Dddddddddooooooooooommmmmmmaaaaaaa!" Louder it hailed.

"Méééélll."

It was like she was floating? Wait, was someone calling her?

"Dddddddddooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmaaaaaaa!"

"Méééééllloooo."

And there was ticking. Someone _was_ calling her.

"DDDDDDDOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Suddenly a blunt force crashed into her side. The cave floor abruptly came into view, rushing up to meet her. She rolled and drifted in the lithic ash just as an earth-shattering boom struck the air like a thunderclap. There was a crackle similar to glass shattering and a cry of pain.

Mélodie's legs scuffled under her as she clambered back to her feet. She turned to the where she had heard the turbulence. About twenty feet away was Logos, buckled against the wall, the butt of a thorn as big as a hefty tent peg protruding from his shoulder. The gunner, hearing the frenzied patter of little wet boots, had come flying down the destined passageway to find Mélodie, mid-gallop, suspended in animation with enchanted tendrils from the Monolith's talons coiled about her. She had been hovering and turning blue.

As Mélodie's skin prickled she caught the sound of ticking once more, faint but very much present. A Doom spell, she'd read about these in some of the more gory horror novels. A fiend would sink a marker into the body of its victim and steadily drink away their energy, it would not cease until fatality or the beast was slain, severing the magical bonds. The Monolith leered, mouth pulled into a snide grin, it's ragged mitt lurched forward.

Logos, blood and mystic sludge oozing from his wound, was straining to catch his breath. A shadow rose ominously above his doubled form and Mélodie could hear the shift of wet sand again.

 **Tick tock.**

Her eyes lowered to the fan in her hand.

 _I've seen mum do it_ , she thought, _I can do it too_.

Her fingers locked around the woven handle of the fan and her brows lowered. _What is magic anyway? Surely...surely it's just wanting something to happen, wanting it really badly, so much that it happens._ Her shoulders hunched, one foot shifted out behind her, stance held taught, weight pressing into the earth. _I want fire, I want thunder, I want wind and I want it all now._ She gritted her teeth and slides of dancing flame, lancing lightening, and howling cyclones flickered through her mind, faster and faster. She bore the images deep into her grey cells so her vision was awash with elemental power.

 **Tick tock.**

 _I want it right NOW!_

She propelled herself forward, the fan swung back behind her, it's steel teeth bared for impact. As Mélodie careened toward the monster the fan plunged, chopping the air with a whistle. It clouted the Monolith, and then did nothing more. No fireworks, no conjury, no hoopla. It had gotten a case of stage fright.

Mélodie, still with the fan outstretched and having no more of an effect on the Monolith than a feather duster, stared at her weapon in disbelieve. _Nothing? Nothing! You pick now to be a useless hunk of junk!_ This was not how it was supposed to be at all. She was meant to be mighty and bold, brave and valiant, fearless and gutsy. She retracted the fan and peered at her fractured reflection in the shimmering folds. She was meant to be her own. Instead, she was just pathetic, timid and wretched. She was a child.

 **Tick tock.**

The air of the cavern was duly split as the Monolith's paw scudded just above her head. It momentarily lulled at the apex of its arc before cleaving back again. It was interrupted with a vibrant spurt of sparks and the screech of metal on metal. A waning Logos stood, guns akimbo at his chest and talon wedged in their crook, between the incensed beast and a dejected Mélodie, who didn't really seem too bothered.

"Mélodie!" He grunted.

She remained fixed on the fan. The claw pressed harder against the guns.

"Mélodie!"

The ugly nail unlocked from the firearms and ascended again. Mélodie turned her gaze upward and felt a flood of genuine terror and remorse.

"Mélodie! For Yevon's sake get out of here!"

Logos went to pick her up again and heave her out of harm's way but he no longer had the strength to bunt her more than a couple of steps.

 **Tick tock**.

With weak eyes and a dazed nod, Mélodie limped clumsily into a run. Behind her she heard the ring of one of his revolvers, the loss of his ammo stash unknown to her, he didn't have any more than five bullets left.

 **Tick tock**.

And not a lot of time either.

At the mouth of the tunnel, she turned to look back at where the pair were fighting, eyes bubbling with tears of grief and burning shame. At least two more rounds had been fired and Logos's legs were giving out from under him, the searing pain in his shoulder racking his entire body. He'd lope and stagger about like a chocobo after being hit by a hover, his hand occasionally clasping at the wound with a twisted expression. The Monolith only seemed to laugh, its crop swelling and the din of raking grit increasing.

 **Tick tock**.

Mélodie's anguish drenched eyes drifted down to the fan again. The stupid _stupid damn_ thing!

The Monolith vomited a wave of ashy vapour, Logos hit the floor and rolled, but not fast enough. As he attempted to scramble back to his feet he was violently choked back, the unexpected jerk caused his grip on the half loaded pistol to give way and it tumbled out of reach with a series of metallic clinks. The bottom half of his cloak was encased in stone and lay heavy over one side of his torso, he was now pinned awkwardly on his back. The Monolith advanced, still snickering at it's crippled prey.

"I hate this." Mélodie whispered.

Her nails dug into the braided leather.

"I hate all of this!"

A soggy boot stepped back into the cavern.

Logos cursed the fiddly tabs of the buckles as he tried to unlatch them one handed with great difficulty. At the same time his leg, the one with the crumpled knee, twitched and thrust out in a kicking motion, trying to expose the hunting knife sheathed in his gaiter. He would feverishly alternate between ripping at the buckles and straining down to his leg in an effort to extract the weapon. One of them would have to give eventually. The sickled fist of the Monolith kept clamping down on the cave floor with malice, followed by the gut-wrenching grate of its slab towing behind. Logos could hear it rasping and purling as it drew nearer. He craned his neck to see it's glowing orbs rising from the horizon of his stammering chest like two ghostly suns. It was perilously close, he could sense the balmy and sticky odour of its breath worming into his nose. His hand grappled again at the buckles and then lurched down to his leg and then back to the buckles.

"H-hey!"

The greedy eyes above him orbited to the side and Logos found his own followed before they widened in a sickly mix of shock and dread. It was Mélodie. Her feet were rooted to the floor, eyes, nose, and hands red and she was fixing the Monolith with a stare of the purest contention. She flapped the fan to her side, her little arms and legs trembling, but with fear? Perhaps a trice, but most assuredly with determination.

 **Tick tock**.

"I'm not afraid of you." She said.

The Monolith growled. It then turned away, regarding the child as a mere pest. Logos daren't to move.

She lifted the fan out in front of her.

"I'm not afraid of you!" She screamed.

It's gruesome skull shot back at her. It was still. Then the blade tipped palm rose up, arched over Logos threateningly, and sunk into the stone on the other side of him. The Monolith turned to the little girl.

"No, no, no! Mélodie what are you doing!"

But she wasn't listening, her hands wrapped around the fan's handle with white knuckles. A hiss squeezed out from the between the fiend's teeth.

"Come on!" She spat. "I'm always ignored and shoved aside but not today! Leave him alone and show _me_ what you've got!"

The Monolith gnashed a warning and it's prowling arm pressed forward, it's mass leaving Logos, far more entertained by this morsel instead.

"Mélodie! Have you lost your mind!"

Logos stretched to snatch a nearby wad of ore and flung it at the retreating beast's back as hard as he could but it was no use. This new game was too tantalising. The Monolith's pace was quickening, the chomping of its claw and grinding of it's back now drumming a steady beat. Mélodie's feet shuffled backward away from the monster but her expression did not let up. She bristled like an angry cat. Logos's hand ripped and tore at the buckles, then his arm would threaten to dislocate in order to snag the knife. His breath noosed by the cloak, sweat trickling down his cheek and his teeth bared in tenacity.

 **Tick tock**.

"I'm done running away! I'm done being told to be quiet! If someone is finally going to pay attention to me, really pay attention, then why not have it be you!"

Ethereal drool seethed from the creature's fangs. Logos finally managed to release a buckle.

"I might be dumb and stupid! I just might be! But I'm me and if people don't like that then whatever!"

That gross tongue snaked out, rivers of foamy saliva slathered over its surface. The claw bit down again forcing Mélodie back further. She flinched from an odd little sensation, like something pricking under her fingernails.

"See, that's why I'm not afraid! Cos if I go, well, there's supposedly nothing to miss!"

Logos felt his fingertips brush over the hilt of the dagger. He caught sight of Mélodie out of the corner of his eye, she was being backed into a corner. Her hair was almost...glowing.

"Adults take responsibility! I started this whole mess and so I should be the one to end it, right!"

The Monolith's great jaws unhinged, the very air shuddering as it released a menacing roar. Logos's nails raked against the handle of the knife. Mélodie thought she could smell burning metal, rather than putrid breath.

 **Tick tock**.

Logos couldn't help a stunted wail escaping from his lips and the hand at the buckle clutched his bleeding shoulder.

"If supposedly all I bring is chaos," she announced, "then let there be chaos!"

The fan swooped down before her, and to as much Mélodie's shock as anyone else's, yellow barbed laces exploded from her arms. They bounced off the fan and the whole cavern was flooded with light, the atmosphere sucked in then bombarded outward, shredding the air with an omnipotent blast. Melodie's skin crackled and her hair flared and gleamed like mini power-lines. She felt her heart jolt and kick, her teeth rattle and the muscles in her arms squeeze with unyielding, wild energy. The lightening fork completely missed the Monolith but, with the glow refracting off it's dented features and it's terrified eyes following the bolt's course, the beast instead bore witness to it slicing through the cave ceiling like a blowtorch through butter.

Huge imposing boulders now poured from above, hurtling down and snapping its skeletal arm in two. It brayed in agony and fright, more chunks of cave gathering around it before one particularly crooked lump pulverized its hideous head. The cavern rained stone and rock and grit and cobble. Logos, thankfully distanced from the fresh gully in the roof, watched in chilling awe as Mélodie was swallowed up by the amassing slag. Biting back the pain he slammed his foot back as far as it could to his thigh and his neck rammed against the collar of his cloak. His partially trapped hip thrust upward, muscles ripping and fingers groaning for the knife.

Lint, sand, and cinders drifted to the ground. Dust exuded from the pile of rocks, odd stray pellets cascading down from between the crags. The cavern was quiet and still, and melancholy. The dull ebb of faint light resettling.

Logos's fingers finally snatched up the knife and with a brutal stroke he slashed the collar of his cloak with a single clean cut – one would think an impossibility with the thick fabric. He writhed frantically out from the shell trap of the stone and stumbled to his feet. Instinctively he discarded the knife, the sound of it chinking on the floor bounced around the desolate walls. He lurched towards the pyramid of fallen rock, hobbling slightly.

"Mélodie!" He cried out.

The silence was deafening.

He staggered forward and began to hurriedly dislodge hunks of debris.

"Mélodie!"

He continued like this for several minutes, in that time he had scratched the surface at several points in the great mass but not made a significant mark in any. Everywhere he dug just seemed to reveal more and more rock. He stepped back, his leg limping a touch.

"Mélodie!"

He waited in the hush. His face a mask of despondency, hands shaking and eyes hopelessly floating over the dark edifice.

Then he heard it. A frail sneeze, and then a cough, and then, in a rasp that was barely audible,

"Polo."

Logos's arms lunge into the mound and ploughed, heaving and wrenching at the stone, sending jagged wads soaring over his shoulder. He bulldozed his way through, hands cut and muscles sore. Then, on the extraction of a small boulder, a feeble light punctured the space around him and a cavity within the structure was revealed. The dead Monolith, it's head nothing more than paste under a fine lump of masonry and it's stump of an arm drooping, lay slanted over the detritus, it's ingot back making a sort of slanted canopy. Tiny spheres of light began to steam off its corpse, their little glimmering tails swishing like a swarm of ghoulish tadpoles. The pyreflies danced and flitted around its body in wide crescents, dipping and rearing in a slow dance. But they also settled about another body, with a touch so light it was almost like kisses. The body was small, short and wrapped in a furry, bulky, now pom-pom void winter coat. It was face down on the chalk-dusted ground.

Logos froze, a lump forming in his throat. He was afraid he had, well, afraid he had 'missed' her. He gingerly shifted forward into the suffocating hollow, his hands felt cold.

The tiny body's leg twitched, then its back shook a little. After, as if by some miracle, the petite form began to squirm about, like an overturned beetle but in reverse, obviously. It spluttered and groaned as one arm jabbed at the ground trying to push.

Logos swept forward, tremendous relief saturating his entire being. His hands came down to grasp firmly under Mélodie's armpits, before scooping up her feeble frame and carrying it from the wreckage, back out into the open cavern. He laid her gently on the podium of stone, next to his half petrified cloak. Her eyes were grey and dark, her bruised chin was dripping, her coat smothered with dirt and hair dishevelled.

"Ow." She whimpered.

"Where does it hurt?" Logos asked, subconsciously placing a hand on top of the child's head.

Mélodie's eyes shut, she grimaced dramatically.

"Everywhere."

The gunner released a sigh.

"That's not very helpful, Mélodie."

She pouted and waggled her left wrist up at him. It was swollen, limp and twisted slightly the wrong way. He took it and lightly applied pressure, Mélodie hissed.

"Don't move." He commanded.

"Wasn't planning to."

He plucked up the discarded knife and wandered back to his cloak, after a few moments of hacking the buckles came loose and jangled in his hand. He knelt back beside Mélodie and reach under to her back. He propped her up just enough to draw out her coat's waistband with a snap.

"Hey, what are you doing?" She carped. "You'll ruin it."

He ignored her and began to wrap the band around the ridged blade of the knife until it was tightly bound in fabric. Briskly, he swiped what should have been the razor edge against his forearm a couple of times, ensuring it was now harmless. He took up Mélodie's arm again and positioned it straight, palm upward, by her side.

"Hold still."

He arranged the knife so one of it's blunt faces was along the forearm, the hilt cradled in Mélodie's hand. She winced as she felt little nips of pain where he pressed against her wrist. The buckles chimed as he threaded them under and over to secure the dagger in place.

"I thought," Mélodie said faintly, "I thought you said you didn't care about me."

Logos's eye raised from where he was working to meet hers.

"I thought you said I could freeze for all you cared."

The gunner's brow furrowed, before a brief smile played on his lips.

"Well," he replied, "the wanted poster said I would only get the bounty if I brought you back alive."

"Haha, very funny."

They remained quiet for the next few minutes. Logos adjusted the buckles and shifted the knife a few times in order for it to set the break whilst causing Mélodie the least discomfort. Once satisfied with his work he stood up.

"There, that should hold. Can you stand?"

"Ooooh," Mélodie's fingers curled around the handle slightly, "cool."

"Don't play with it." He mildly reproached. "It's just there to keep you from moving it too much. We'll have a doctor look at it when we get back to the Château. Now, can you stand?"

"Yeah yeah, I've got it."

Now the right way up, Mélodie sat up and then hopped onto her feet. Logos strode over to his forgotten cloak, gathering up the remnants he had been able to salvage when he chopped off the buckles. Half of it was still good, save for the tattered triangle missing diagonally across the back, he'd get one of the Goons who had skills in tailoring to patch it up for him. He flung it around his neck, since there were now no fastenings, looking a bit like a bandit who was into punk rock. He turned to usher Mélodie along and found her a little way away, surveying the remains of her work. He noted how she was trembling, just a fraction, and her weak, quivering fist (the one not broken) came up and scrubbed at her face. Logos surmised it was not to wipe her runny nose. She bent down and picked up her mother's steely, serrated fan. After a ponderous moment, he removed the cloak from his shoulders.

Mélodie felt thick, warm and slightly coarse fabric enclose around her. The gunner then rounded to her front and cupped his hands under her armpits once more, raising her off the ground. She squirmed and batted his arms away with a gripe.

"You want to walk?'" Logos asked.

Mélodie simply looked away sulkily.

"Well, you either walk or I carry you."

She squatted down and put her head on her knees, arms wrapped around. She gave a grumpy whine.

"I'd think very carefully about this Mélodie if I were you." Logos cautioned. "This is probably the last time I am ever going to make an offer like that. You're getting far too big for that nonsense now."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" Came a muffled retort.

Logos could only tut, he turned on his heel and began to head out.

"Logos."

He swivelled round.

"Mélodie."

Still crouched on the floor, she looked over at him with wide, dilated eyes, much like a puppy that had just been kicked. She wasn't a particularly talented actress though, a shadow of a smirk danced on her features, here was a hidden agenda.

"Can I have a piggy back?"

* * *

"And then mum told me I couldn't have a mural of a Queen Coeurl fighting a Behemoth on my bedroom wall."

Logos was beginning to regret asking Mélodie why she really ran away. She'd given him a vague list of about twelve excuses, each more benign than the last. Honestly, when he was her age he'd already been shown how to fire a gun, how to fight and suffered a fair share of emotional abuse. Ormi had been orphaned and her mother, for the love of Yu Yevon, had been locked up in a temple and told daily she was worthless and only suitable for brothel work. Kids these days.

His boots shifted through the snow, the downpour, although still thick, a touch calmer now in the midnight chill. Mélodie was saddled on his back, cloak still encasing her, occasionally he would hear a sniff or sneeze from her direction and, despite the ensconcing fabric, she was shivering. Her mother's fan had been relocated to the gunner's belt to avoid her playing around with it.

"Mélodie, if you are not going to tell me the real reason then that's your prerogative but, please, don't blabber to me about meagre twaddle."

He didn't need to see her face to know she was pouting again. He felt her head nuzzle into his neck slightly, grouchy and cold. Something extraordinary had happened in the cave, and it wasn't the magic. Mélodie had exposed a small piece of herself, in her row with the Monolith her words had expressed vulnerability, giving a tiny glimpse at what was really going on in that funny little head of hers. If only for curiosity's sake, Logos wanted to know more, but Mélodie only seemed to want to talk when it came down to the wire.

"You're not going to tell mum are you?" Mélodie asked

"I think her suspicion may perk when she sees her daughter with a broken wrist and badly grazed knees, don't you think?"

"I'll just say that girl came back and gave me a revenge Chinese burn."

"Don't be preposterous, a child couldn't break bones."

"Wanna bet?"

Logos had made a conscious decision to avoid the ice on the way back, he could barely tackle it when able-bodied he was damn sure not risking it with a done knee. This route was longer, but safer. He could feel warm liquid slowly seeping from within his jacket and drying into the threads. Although the spell had been broken the spike was still buried in his chest and the residual effects of a Doom cast always remain sore to the touch. He'd feebly splashed some Hi-Potion on it, same for Mélodie's bloody chin, but regardless he felt a bit groggy, rickety and like his teeth might come loose.

"Who is looking after the Château while you're out? Is it Ormi?"

"No, one of my batmen. Ormi's with your mother, you know that."

"They might have come back." Mélodie bit before grumbling, "Ormi could keep a secret."

"Pah!" Logos barked. "Ormi wouldn't know a secret if it smashed him square in his face, he is the last person I'd trust to do undercover work. All the subtly of a rampaging Malboro."

Mélodie giggled quietly, Logos smiled.

"Well, he's kept one secret." Mélodie chimed.

"Oh?"

"I'll tell you if you want."

"Now Mélodie, that's not really what secrets are for, now is it?"

Curiosity gave him a flash of supple thigh. Damn her, damn her!

"But go on."

The little girl on his back leaned forward to whisper over his shoulder, despite the fact there wasn't another person around for miles.

"Last time he was home from the western isles he took a trip out to Bevelle." Logos failed to see the fascination here, but Mélodie continued. "He came back with this little booklet thing and showed it to me. It was full of pictures of rings."

Logos's eyes widened.

"He asked me which one I liked best. I said this silver one with a big diamond and little pinky coloured gems."

Fayth damn it Ormi! He let out a groan, dreading the possibility that he might be asked to be best man – Hell or high water he would not do speeches.

"I think it's sweet."

"Sweet?" The gunner inquired. "Not 'gushy' or 'icky' or 'gross'?"

"Well yeah it is all those things but it's also cute." Mélodie reasoned. "I think him and Kiku will be happy."

The tall man rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"What about you huh? How come I don't see you with any girls? Too ugly?"

"Ha! I'm not as stupid as Ormi, those secrets are mine and mine alone." He proclaimed. "They'll go to the grave with me."

Of course, Mélodie was full of falsities and ignorance on this subject, Logos was just much better at being discreet. He was also aware that anything he did say had the potential to push this little chin-wag into R-rated territory. Trap firmly shut.

"Mum's gonna tell dad isn't she?"

Logos gave a sideways glance to Mélodie over his shoulder.

"Probably."

She mewled a little. Logos pondered for a moment, recalling what he had been informed of concerning Leblanc and Mélodie's argument.

"Will your father punish you?"

"No," she said sullenly, "but mum will make a big thing about it. Which is dumb, it's not like he ever listens to her."

More thoughts turned over in the gunner's mind. Tentatively he probed,

"Were you really upset when he couldn't come to see you?"

"Huh? No!" Mélodie replied firmly, "I wasn't upset, I was angry. I'm still angry."

"Why all the rage?"

"Because-because," she paused, trying to find the words. "Because he never tries."

"How do you mean?"

"I'm just another thing on a list to him. Something always comes up, something always happens. I know he's busy and important, I get it, but every time? I should be important too!"

Mélodie snorted a ribbon of mucus back up her nose, wiping it with the back of her good hand.

"And mum should be important to him too."

Logos nodded to himself, he could most certainly agree with that.

"I'm not a dope," the girl proceeded, "I can see dad doesn't feel the same about mum as she does about him. It's not fair, mum does so much for him and he just ignores her."

The gunner's expression turned void and contemplative.

"Have you," he spoke cautiously, "have you ever spoken to your father about this?"

"No." She responded. "I don't see him enough to feel like I can. Even when I go to Mushroom Rock I only really get to be with him for dinner; he's working the rest of the time."

The little girl's mouth wrinkled up for a moment as she remembered something.

"I think he likes that Lady Lucil."

Logos was glad Mélodie couldn't see his eyebrows raise.

"Hmm?" He pressed gingerly.

"The last few times I've been she's joined us for dinner, and she just always seems to be around."

The flurries of snow drifted down upon the solemn pair as they encroached upon the ravine.

"I think he's going to ask her to marry him."

If non-diegetic sound could become diegetic sound then the rip of a hover screeching to a halt would have blared across the mountain. One of Logos's legs had decided to just stop working and he nearly face planted into the snow, fortunately, he managed to recover himself.

"Wha-what?" He garbled. "Why do you think that?"

"Last time, I overheard dad asking one of his stewards to go out to Bevelle." She replied. "He told them to go to this shop. I recognised the name, it was the one written at the top of the booklet Ormi had shown me."

Maesters wept this was awful. Logos was speechless, if what Mélodie was saying was true, and he had a nasty inkling it was, then the result would be, oh Fayth-. If Leblanc found out, and she would because it's quite a challenge to remain ignorant when one of the Spiran High Council is set to wed, she would be at best devastated and at worst inconsolable. He felt a horrid lurch in his stomach, what if she didn't even hear it from Nooj? What if she heard it from someone else? Or the media? His mind reminisced about that time over a decade ago when Nooj vanished and she had locked herself away, her bedroom her own prison cell of misery. She now had a daughter, a thriving inter-island organisation, over a hundred employees and people who depended on her, who served her with such loyalty that the Syndicate motif had morphed into a symbol of amnesty and charity throughout Spira. There was no chance of hiding now, what if she crumbled in public?

That wasn't really the point though. It was unjust. Leblanc may have been in denial, it was clear to anyone, but she was also in love and you can't disown someone for that. She was resolute, she was determined, she was unshakable, valiant, compassionate, charming. Logos could have used a whole dictionary worth of words to describe his Boss, he could also be painfully aware of the fact that, if she so desired, she could have any man she wanted. Yet she chose the Mevyn, a man who was completely impartial to her. Logos thought he was ill. One of the most testing aspects of his life was having to deal with Nooj. Logos had been shot at, he'd been repudiated by his family, he'd been called a deserter but to fight the urge to punch Nooj in his stupid smug face every time it presented itself was unbearable. Yet, he coped, because the rational part of his brain knew that Nooj was still a human and his own man, to make his own choices, even if Logos thought them poor choices. It was agonising to admit but the Mevyn owed Leblanc nothing. They weren't married, they didn't live together, there had never been any proclamation that they were an item. No, he was wrong, Nooj did owe her one thing, and that was to be attentive to the small person on Logos's back whom he helped create. But not love, it was sad but true. The Boss deserved better.

"I see." He eventually said. "I suppose you don't approve?"

"Not really. It's not I don't like Lady Lucil, she's nice enough." Mélodie's brow furrowed. "It's just, if dad is going to be with anyone I think it should be with mum, and me."

The gunner bowed his head wistfully.

"Still," she went on to say, "if dad doesn't love mum then what's the point? I wouldn't want mum to be unhappy, cos she shouldn't be. Mum should be with someone who cares and loves her, someone who will help her to be happy."

His head resurfaced.

"That's a very mature outlook, Mélodie."

Mélodie laid forward into his back again, huddling into his jacket collar for warmth and snuffling.

"I don't hate dad or anything, I know he cares about me in a weird way."

"I concur."

"I just don't think he is always a good dad."

Logos cocked his head, deliberating this for a moment.

"For the record, I didn't mean what I said, I know mum cares about me too."

"Now I can tell you for a fact that is true."

They continued along the mountain pass, imprints of their path left in the snow behind them. The starlight ebbed and flowed over the misty night sky and in the distance, a few speckled gleams from the Château could be seen. Logos's mind was whirring, deep in thought.

Mélodie had come into the world when it was at its pinnacle of transformation. Just shy of a year before she was born the Celsius had set down in Bevelle and The Gullwings's eccentric Captain had sprung out blurting that he had seen a land that was not Spira. Most people regarded the man as an oaf (he couldn't honestly be called 'Brother' could he? No he must just have a really fiddling Al Bhed name no one can get right). His claims were titled a farce, a whimsy, he must have had one too many and seen a queer little corner of Besaid upside down or something of the sort. Then his perky sister supported his case, and that 'Buddy' chap (another hard to pronounce name Logos was sure), and then Shinra, the child prodigy of sphere technology, the boy, now man, who supposedly knows everything. Within the week a ship was chartered out to investigate and behold, on its return, the fractured southern isles were suddenly an actuality.

For Spira, it had been the most significant discovery in, well, ever. People had never considered there to be anything else. With the prohibition of Machina and the ever-threatening presence of a gargantuan soul-sucking whale, most weren't inclined to take a holiday 'abroad'. Now, Spira found it was not alone. The Gullwings ceased being sphere hunters, they had bigger fish to fry, they were now the officials charged with exploration, cartography and foreign introductions and relations. Though Logos was a bit dubious about that bonkers Al Bhed fellow being Spira's first impression. The clouds parted and soon the maps were bustling with fresh patches of green, yellow and grey.

Due to The Gullwings past occupation, the most logical proposition of peace to fresh faces were spheres, and how the new neighbours swallowed them up. They couldn't believe it, this island, a mere spit of land in a far greater body it turns out and that most even assumed was uninhabited, was able to contribute one of the most powerful resources they had ever clapped eyes on. Soon Shinra, the boy wonder, elected to stay in Spira and correlate a more unionised manufacturing and research process for spheres and sphere hunting itself became something way over the heads of kiddie clubs and enthusiastic hobbyist, it became a pursuit, a profession. The Syndicate, efficient and steadfast, was an obvious choice for partnership and Leblanc, despite some early hiccups and bad blood with The Gullwings's kid genius, gladly accepted. Soon there were meetings, there were conferences, there were negotiations, words like 'delegation' and 'expansion' were thrown around.

And somewhere in all this chaos, Mélodie arrived, not with a whimper but with a bang.

She would have to compete with leaps and bounds in scientific, economic and social development. The spiking growth of her mother's business, not to forget her chronic tendency for philanthropy. Her father's involvement, and self-evident position at the helm, of a county's political restructuring, _again_.

It was no wonder she shouted so loud.

 _I should be important too!_ Logos loathed to admit she was right. He rifled through his memory bank and tried to a recall when Mélodie had started being 'bad'? Was it always? What about good, when was she good? He couldn't recall, however, with great discomfort, he considered that maybe there had been occasions but it was just no one paid her any heed when she was good. _If someone is finally going to pay attention to me, really pay attention, then why not have it be you!_ Why not indeed. A germ of an idea began to wriggle in Logos's head.

The gunner licked his lips, chapped from the cold, and cleared his throat.

"So," he said warily, "what _do_ you think makes a 'good dad'"

The little girl ruminated on the question for a moment, she sneezed, twice, before her head tilted and expression puckered.

"I think he should be kind and caring," Mélodie began, "strong, but not like muscles, like, someone who- you know? Is always there and makes things feel ok and safe."

"Reliable? Dependable? Vigilant?"

"Yeah yeah," Mélodie didn't really know what some of those words meant, but they sounded good! "He should be smart too and be able to help when you're stuck and he should want to spend time with mum and me. Most importantly though he should be cool."

"'Cool'?"

"Yeah you know, like, cool. He should want to do fun things and teach me neat stuff. And he should listen to the fun things I want to do and neat stuff I want to learn and help me to do them, not just tell me I can't. He should help me to be a cool person too."

"And what, pray tell, are some of these 'fun' and 'neat' activities?"

"Ummm..."

Mélodie's stubby fists lightly bumped a short rhythm on Logos's back as she looked upwards and tried to think.

"I'd want to learn to fight, like for real. I want to know how to read the sphere oscillators. I want to go exploring, ride an airship and see the islands. I want to learn how to use a weapon."

The gunner shifted the bulk on his back a touch, to take some pressure off his ailing shoulder but also to gauge the weight of the partially loaded gun at his hip. He scanned the perimeter of the ravine and settled on an upturned portion of an old ruin.

"What about your dad what was he like?" Mélodie quizzed.

"Huh? What mine? Oh he was alright I suppose. Same as any other."

"Where is he now?"

"Well, actually he's dead." Logos replied blankly.

"Oh, I'm sorry...how did he die?"

"Hmm? Oh, he was ill. Mélodie-?"

Logos had stopped, the little girl gazed curiously over his shoulder.

"Are you right or left handed?"

She studied her dinky mitts for a moment before deciding,

"Right."

It was the unbroken side and Mélodie was actually ambidextrous anyway.

Suddenly she was plopped down into the sleet, sinking to near her knees, shuddering she pulled the cloak around her a bit tighter to keep out the cold. The gunslinger was walking some few feet away towards a lump of old monument. He took out three small bottles from his supply pouch, Mélodie noted two potions and an antidote, and arranged them in a line on top of the ancient hunk of wall. He then about-faced and stalked back to her. Mélodie watched, bewildered, as Logos unlatched one of his long-barrelled revolvers from its holster, he twirled it thrice, then turned it around and presented it to her. Her eyes lulled down to the smooth wood handle, full of mistrust.

"Huh?" She murmured suspiciously.

He motioned the gun towards her lightly.

"Go on."

Her scrutinising eyes studied his expression, before hesitantly taking up the gun in her good hand. She ogled the steely metal along the barrel, the sheen on the well-polished grip and the sharp, small, but certainly deadly, ignition hammer on the top rear.

"Cooooool." She breathed.

She went to strike it out in front of her and open fire. Logos, a supposedly responsible adult who had just handed a firearm over to a child, watched with cool assurance as she struggled awkwardly with the weight of the body and stiffness of the trigger. A threat she was not.

"Right," he announced, "here."

He crouched down behind Mélodie and clasped a hand over hers on the grip, thankful that his wound was in the opposite shoulder. His other hand gently held onto the girl's left arm, to position her more side on and to keep her steady.

"Well, firstly you're far too tense." He observed, giving her a brisk little shake.

"Uuuhh-uuuuh-uuuhh," Mélodie giggled with the jerks.

"Focus."

"Sorry, focusing."

She rocked her head from side to side to release the muscles in her neck.

"Bend your knees a bit."

"Any more I'll be kneeling in the snow-! Sorry, doing now, bending."

"Place your hand a bit higher on the grip."

He shifted her hand as such.

"It's kinda uncomfortable."

"It's because your hands are so small but good habits start early. Eventually, it'll feel more at home. Now, see that first potion on the left, I want you to stare directly at it, like you are trying to burn a hole through it."

Her chin dipped to her neck and her eyes peered out from under creased brows. She felt Logos's other hand give the end of her plait a short tug.

"Ah!"

"Keep your head up. Aim just a little higher."

He directed her arm up a fraction and to the left a smidge. Mélodie was caught off guard when suddenly Logos's head was on her shoulder, practically cheek to cheek with her. For a moment she gave him a sideways gawk of sheer displeasure and unease, before she noted his serious expression which prompted her to follow his piercing glare along her arm to the tiny sight crowning the gun, and then onward further to the target. Her own gaze turned flinty as she too honed in.

"Deep breath in."

She did so.

"When you breathe out do it slowly, and don't pull the trigger, squeeze it."

Mélodie could feel her fingers pulse, oddly warm in the chill.

"Aim..." his hand tightened around hers, "fire."

 **BANG!**

"Aah!"

With a raucous clap the potion shattered into a frore of glass, the contents dribbling away down the grooves of the ruin husk and into the snow. The force exploding from the gun had caused an unyielding and totally unexpected jolt down Mélodie's arm and into her shoulder. If it weren't for Logos she knew she would have keeled over backward.

"It's alright, it's just the kickback." He reassured. "Keep your arm strong all the way through the shot."

He took the gun up out of her grasp for a moment so she could flap her wrist and dissolve the tension. Her eyes were fixed on where the bullet had made contact, chewing her lip and bobbing on the toes of her, steadily drying, sheepskin boots. The gunner watched her curiously.

"Hmm, perhaps we should leave it be and head back. I'm sure you've been given a start enough times toni-."

"No!" She interjected suddenly, "I want to try again."

He eyed her inquisitively for a moment, he was half standing now but gradually returned back to the little girl's level.

"Very well."

Once again their hands locked around the grip of the gun, Mélodie's head remained upright this time and she was breathing smoothly, though very intently.

"Let me pull the trigger."

Logos felt Mélodie's hand nudge his from underneath, with some unwillingness he unhooked his finger from the trigger guard. Mélodie sucked in the air theatrically.

"Alright, again, deep breath."

She mumbled something whilst nodding to indicate her puffed up cheeks.

"Aim...-."

 **BANG!**

Jumping the gun slightly, excusing the pun, she had indeed managed the trigger solo this time, albeit a bit clumsily. She had also remained standing, save for a marginal incline in her upper back. The second potion was now seeping into the stone and specks of glass littered the frosty ground. Unlike her previous shot, Mélodie did not feel sparks of anxiety, in fact, she was beaming. Light surges of adrenaline rushed through her chest, along her arm, down her legs and whirled around her head. She didn't even feel the cold anymore.

Unexpectedly, she felt Logos's hand slide away from her own but on this occasion, he didn't take the gun with him. He returned to full height and stepped away from her.

"Huh? Aw come on, let me do the last one!"

"Calm down. That's exactly what I'm doing."

She looked at him perplexed, then down at the gun before along to the remaining bottle.

"By-by myself?"

He nodded.

"Or would you prefer my guidance?"

"No, no I want to try it."

"You get one shot though, Mélodie." He forewarned. "Before I regret this."

Luckily there was only one bullet left anyway.

"No pressure, huh?"

Logos rolled his eyes, before thinking it wiser to take a few more paces back away from Mélodie.

She jostled her shoulders a bit, allowing her limbs (and gun, perhaps a bit ill-advised) to flutter limply. She bent her knees so they just scud the snow before raising her right arm and repositioning the gun in front of her. Her keen little eyes settled on the antidote, glaring at the rounded glass and greeny-yellow fizzing fluid inside. Her chin raised a touched and as it did she drank in the brisk air through her nose. She could feel it filling her lungs and stomach, normally the mountain air would burn at this time of year but in this moment it actually felt almost mild and comfortable. A bubble in the antidote popped, she could see it's colour fading as the frigid air chilled it and its glass was speckled with ice. Her finger began to put pressure on the curved face of the trigger, envisaging that the grip of the gun wasn't even there at all, like she was simply closing her hand into a fist.

 **BANG!**

Bright, hissing, lime green ooze splatter the stone, steaming as it's fermented molecules hit the bitter breeze. Glass ricocheted off nearby rocks and the bottle top pinged off the cliff face before wedging itself in the snow. The barrel of the gun was smoking and for the first time, Mélodie regarded the heat emanating from the metal.

She removed her finger from the trigger guard and gently dropped her arm before looking over her shoulder to peak at Logos. He was looking dead ahead, at the very spot the antidote had been occupying until a few seconds ago. He looked...in awe.

Without fuss or dramatics, Mélodie had successfully made a 'kill', with intention. This was a girl who had never held anything more dangerous than a drawing compass (though Logos was confident Mélodie could find a way to make even that deadly) and she had just accomplished an on-target shot with a foreign firearm on only her third attempt. Perhaps it was luck? Something within him suspected not though. It utterly stupefied him to say it but in that moment Logos actually admired Mélodie. He also felt a peculiar fuzzy heat in his chest, he didn't really know what that was though.

"Goodness." He eventually burbled. "That was actually...that was actually quite good."

"I know," Mélodie said turning to him, and with a wink added. "I'm the best."

She then did something even more unexpected, she handed the gun back to him, with no objections. As Logos tentatively took it up Mélodie spoke, and what she said made him question why things tend to come in threes, he supposed surprises should be no different.

"I'm sorry."

"W-what?" He stammered.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ran away, I'm sorry I said the mean things I said, I'm sorry I nearly got you killed."

Logos was dumbfounded, more so then he had been in the past few hours and probably more than he had ever been in his entire life. Mélodie did not apologise, ever. It was a cardinal rule, she would linguistically worm her way out of it any way she could, often performing impressive mental gymnastics. Her favourite method was to be so exacerbating that the opposing force would eventually just become so incensed they would have no choice but to surrender. Mélodie, saying sorry? Well, the term 'blood from a stone' comes to mind.

"And thank you."

"For...for what?"

"Coming to get me." She replied. "I was wrong, you do care, everyone at the Château does, at least I hope so. I know you are all just looking out for me."

Her hands fidgeted for a moment, trying to grow accustomed to this new experience, before she looked up at him with a sheepish smile.

"And thanks for letting me try out your gun."

Logos, who for the passing few minutes had been stunned into silence, quietly trying to decipher if he had bled too much and was now having some bizarre hallucination, lightly placed a hand on his chest and bowed his head.

"Pleasure."

He was still trying to process the situation. The cogs in his head were grinding industrially, in that annoying way that often keeps sleep at bay, Mélodie appeared to be in thought also. In the hush of the slumbering mountain, Logos decided something.

"Mélodie," the gunner's voice was steady with certainty, "how about we make a pact?"

"A pact?"

"A wager, a deal."

"Oh."

"How about, when you have rested from this fateful night and, of course, once your wrist is mended, you do the following. You clean your room, organise your reading nook, carry out your chores, concentrate on your studies, play nice with your peers and overall be, well, good."

"Hey! That's not fair, what do I get out of this?" Mélodie griped.

"Hold on, I'm not finished." He appeased. "If, Mélodie, you do all those things, I promise to speak with your mother and propose that you are ready to come along with us on missions."

One of the little girl's eyebrows raised in intrigue.

"Furthermore, you come and train with me once a week and that will be the case for as long as you continue to behave amicably. How does that sound?"

She was still eyeing him incredulously.

"What's the catch?" She asked warily.

"The catch? What other than doing all those things I just listed?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing." He shrugged perplexed.

"Will I have to go to the Academy?" Her lip began to jut out.

"Well, that would be up to your mother ultimately." Logos clarified. "But no, it certainly wouldn't be one of my stipulations."

"Stipu-wha?" Her skepticism grew slightly more.

"Condition -ah- what I mean is it, no. No, as part of this deal I, myself, would not ask you to go to the Academy. Not if you don't want to, of course?"

"No, I don't." Her cynicism eased.

"So," Logos offered a hand, side on, prepared to shake, "do we have a deal?"

Mélodie did naught but to review it with a doubtful conjecture.

"I want to add something."

So like Mélodie, unless the ball was in her court she refused to play the game. The tall man sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Go on."

"You don't tell anyone I said I was sorry."

"That's a bit of an odd one."

"It's not I don't mean it, I just don't want people to know I said it."

Regardless, it made no difference to Logos at the end of the day.

"Alright, well, you already have a secret with Ormi I suppose, this can be your secret with me. Besides, I am much better at keeping them than you are Mélodie, so you're in good hands."

She smiled bashfully.

"So," he prompted his hand towards her, "deal?"

Mélodie peered at it again, eyebrows knotted, then up at his face, then back to the hand. She grinned.

"Pact!" She cheered, high-fiving him instead.

"Excellent. Now let's get back before we catch our death."

Mélodie, now full of beans, gathered up the ends of the cloak in her arms, using a patch of it to wipe her streaming nose, and began crunching through the snow.

"Oh, by the way, you have to act surprised when Ormi tells you."

"Oh, of course!"

* * *

"Oh for Fayth's sake, blast the anesthetic! Just get on with it!"

Logos, now back in his chambers, jacket and undershirt removed with shoulder turning a peculiar shade of pale viridian, whipped off his belt, folded it twice, jammed it in between his teeth and slumped onto the bed.

"No need to be so melodramatic." The Dr. Goon droned.

"Pfft, drama queen." An assisting She-Goon grumbled, slouching over the railings of Logos's mezzanine bedroom.

Logos and Mélodie had stumbled through the Château doors an hour ago. Mélodie had, mercifully, agreed to be carried normally the rest of the way back and the gunner had been grateful as it meant he could prop her on his hip and take the pressure of his throbbing shoulder. On their return, he had insisted that she be seen to first. Although the wrist hadn't seemed to bother her too much, her skin had become notably paler and features redder, she was also clammy and shivering despite being out of the frore air. She was wrapped up in bed now, a nanny Goon watching over her and finally, Logos could have the sticky, gory spike in his upper chest treated. Until a Fem-Goon, the same nanny from earlier in fact, had insisted that she get something to null the pain before they begin. She had now been gone twenty-five minutes.

"She'll be back in a moment, take that out of your mouth." The Dr. Goon stood up lazily and crossed to the bed.

Logos mumbled something insulting and incoherent before better sense caused him to extract the belt and sit up.

"Where's Arissa gone to get the bloody stuff, Luca?"

"She's only trying to help." The She-Goon didn't move.

"Pah! A shred more than what you're doing I'll give her that!" He retorted. "Come on Indris, get this thing out."

He gave the Dr. Goon's arm a sharp nudge and flopped back onto the bed, the great shard from the Monolith still jutting out from his shoulder proudly. The physician, Indris, rolled his eyes and snapped on a pair of gloves.

"Well, I'm not one for questioning my patients on their comfort. It's your choice."

He nabbed the belt and waggled it back in Logos's face.

"You'll want this, trust me."

"Alright, I know, I know."

"And put your arms up behind your head so they are out of the way."

"Want me to hold them down." The She-Goon asked, belatedly sauntering over. "In case he squirms."

"What bedside manner you have, Treza." Logos rebutted coolly. "Here, you can even use the belt if you want."

He gave her a suggestive nod and perceptive smirk. It was impossible to hide her distaste.

"Ew."

She greatly lamented that handful of drunken evenings six months prior.

"Shut up and hold still," Indris scolded, "and no don't hold his arms down, he'll probably want to grab the headboard."

"Sounds like we're in for a fun night." Logos muttered before returning the belt to his mouth.

"I said shut up."

The Dr. Goon took up two tools from the compartments lining his own belt. A long pair of forceps and a sharp, clamp-like instrument. He tugged the goggles on top of his head down over his eyes and flicked down a magnifying monocle before leering over the gunner. The She-Goon, Treza, stood by with arms crossed and an acute sense of disinterest.

"This is going to hurt." The doctor intoned with unnerving playfulness.

"Yovvve go' 'is 'eassurance 'ing down to a- uuaaaagh!"

Halfway through Logos's garbled jibe a searing, white-hot pain had surged through his upper body. It felt like his lungs had turned into a hive of bees. The Dr. Goon gripped the end of the barb with the forceps and the clamp thing was now wedged into the wound to allow for some wiggle room. Logos grimaced, biting down hard into the leather and digging his head back into the pillow. He felt it wrench as it released from where ever it was jammed, then shift and grind against his bones, his torn muscles untangling fast and pinging back like elastic bands. The She-Goon continued to watch, expression blasé, before checking over her fingernails. Indris twisted the thorn with the same amount of cautiousness as he would if he were operating a butter churn. Logos could hear squelching and his chest began to feel damp and warm again, and still, there was more to come, how this thing hadn't come out the other side of him he'd never know. His teeth bore down on the belt with such force he was afraid he might swallow the damn thing.

"Hhhhhnnnnnneegh!"

"Found it!"

There was a gross, wet pop and the dart was now held victorious in the doctor's forceps. The Fem-Goon was perched at the top of the spiral stairs from Logos's office, a small lilac coloured vial poised between her fingers. Her expression morphed from bright and peppy to one a little more queasy. Logos's hands unlatched from the headboard (he had succumbed to the suggestion) and ripped the belt from his mouth.

"What time do you call this?"

The Fem-Goon placed her hands on her hips moodily and blew some unkempt hair out of her eyes.

"Sorry." She responded, surly. "The boss is back, she caught me in the corridor and wanted to see Mélodie. I came as soon as I could."

She shook the little bottle testily.

"Do you still want this?"

"Yes." The gunner drawled from the bed.

"No." The Dr. Goon interjected. "You don't want pain prevention, you want painkillers. I'll get you some morphine or opiates or something."

"Does Arissa have to go on another four mile hike to find them?"

"No I have some in my bag, stop moaning."

Over the next several minutes the gunner was poked and prodded by no less than three syringes (one of which a jet injector), a sickle-shaped 'dental' probe (Logos really didn't know what that was for other than perhaps spite), a surgical staple gun and a good old-fashioned needle and thread combo.

The She-Goon completed the inspection of her fingernails. Her eyes drifted upward to be met by a man who appeared to be attempting a version of Mélodie's 'puppy dog eyes' face, and failing miserably.

"Treza." Logos rasped slyly.

"What?"

"Can you get me a cigarette?"

She emitted a frustrated signed.

"There's a new pack in my desk drawer, lighter is in my jacket pocket."

"You are just unbeliev-, I mean it's-, ugh!"

"Aeon's wept, it's only a cigarette. I mean the way you yammer on it's like I asked you to sleep with me aga- AAH!"

There was a resounding crunch from the other end of the bed. Logos craned his neck to find the Dr. Goon half propped on the mattress, his hands grasping the gunner's knee.

"It's better when you don't know it's coming." He shrugged.

"Indris you bastard!"

"Relax, it wasn't even fully dislocated. Your ligaments are fucked though."

"Is that a medical term?"

Logos could hear simpering to his left, his head shot toward the snickering She-Goon.

"Treza! Cigarette, now! That's an order, not a request."

"Geez ok, ok. Keep your pants on...please."

"What's all the commotion up here, loves?"

Logos instinctively bolted upright to attention for the entrance of his magenta-clad boss. She was now crowning the top stair, cape-sleeved coat and high feathered-fur collar uncharacteristically ruffled, but expression comfortingly serene.

"Boss." The Goons chimed.

Logos suddenly had a lump of fabric land in his lap.

"Put a shirt on man." The doctor hissed.

With some wincing, he did as he was told and threw the blanket over his legs in a pathetic attempt to guard his limbs against the physicians wandering hands. Leblanc approached in a way Logos likened to gliding, to which the Dr. Goon removed his goggles and gave a subtle gesture of his head to instruct the female Goons to leave. As the She-Goon passed he briefly grabbed her arm.

"Get him his damn cigarettes."

"What? Why?"

"Just do it."

Leblanc now stood at the end of the bed, the Dr. Goon scuttled about behind her and bent low to scoop something up.

"I believe this is your's, boss." He asserted, presenting the handle of a red and silver metal weapon.

The fan, Logos must have idly ignored it when it fell from his detached belt. She took it purposefully.

"Thank you, love."

"He'll be alright, boss. A bad laceration to the upper chest with an impaled foreign object, all extracted and sutured now. Partially dislocated knee with tearing of the ligaments, re-aligned, I'll set and brace it in a moment. He's received a Doom cast so I've administered some antivenin to nullify any residual effects and also thrown in some analgesics and a light sedative to ease any pain."

Throughout this Leblanc's eyes hadn't shifted from Logos, she was lightly nodding in response to the doctor's report and smiling in a knowing way.

"He'll need bed rest, to keep the affected leg elevated and he'll need to take the antivenin twice a day for, ooh, three, four days? I'll reassess then. I'll fetch some crutches from the medical wing so he can get up and about, stitches won't come out for at least two weeks though."

"Love?"

The Dr. Goon, still mid-way through his spiel, turned to his leader.

"Could you give us a moment?"

The Goon stared between Leblanc and Logos for a few seconds, bewildered.

"Oh, oh of course, boss, of course." He shuffled back toward the stairs. "I'll go get those crutches then."

With that he bustled down the spiral staircase and Logos could hear the familiar click of his chamber door opening and shutting again. Leblanc, still smiling, stepped around the bed and seated herself on the edge.

"How are you really, love?" She asked, her nose wrinkling in a way that Logos always deemed charming.

"Sore." He replied, a hand running over his heavy eyes. "But all in one piece. Just my luck that Indris is the Dr. Goon on duty tonight."

"You're lucky." Leblanc chuckled. "He's the only one who will see you, you've scared all the other ones away."

"How's Mélodie?"

Leblanc gently laid the fan down, leaning it against one of the end bedposts. She rubbed her arm, her eyes straying upward for a moment.

"She's alright." She stated delicately. "Her arm is in a cast now and she's had some painkillers. She has a high fever, she's got a nasty cough and she needs to sleep propped up."

Leblanc's expression turned a little sad and Logos experienced a great pang of guilt for not checking for appropriate landing pads before chucking Mélodie around.

"I spoke to her for a bit and she was fine but after a while she seemed disorientated. Arissa told me it's probably the fever." She bit her lip, but then shook herself off. "But it's fine. Doctor has given her some stuff to help and if she rests up she'll be bouncing off the walls again in no time." She affirmed this in a way that clearly was more for her benefit than his.

"I'm glad to hear she's on the mend." He consoled.

"She told me everything by the way." Leblanc suddenly said bluntly.

A flash of panic danced on the gunner's face.

"Everything?" He probed, recalling snippets of his and Mélodie's heated exchanged in the ravine.

"Yes, everything." Leblanc crossed her legs and placed her hands in her lap, business-like. "It was very strange, I came in and I couldn't even ask if she was hurt before she just blurted it all out. She told me how she snuck into my office and took my fan, how she ran away, about the Grim Gazes, the Monolith, the cave, the magic." She paused and looked intently into his eyes. "She also told me about how you came after her, and your makeshift firing range."

Logos shifted uncomfortably, he knew his face was painted with a particular abashed expression he reminisced wearing when he was a child, more specifically when his mother was about to reprimand him. However, Leblanc's features softened.

"Thank you." She said earnestly. "I mean, I knew you would, love, but thank you all the same."

"Just doing my duty really, boss." He accepted simply.

"Ormi and I came as soon as we heard, we did have to call in a favour from those Dullwings though." She sneered a bit. "However, if you weren't here she could have gone miles before we had the chance to catch up with her."

Logos somewhat doubted Mélodie's little legs could have achieved such a feat.

"And although I am a little apprehensive on the guns," her face distorted and hands came up as if they were comically trying to bat away a puckering frog, "I think, I think Mélodie might have actually enjoyed herself."

They sat in a placid and cordial silence for a few moments. Other than some misplaced strands of hair and the dishevelment of her garments, the Boss positively glowed an aura of pure tranquillity and relief. The gunner observed how he hadn't witnessed her like this in, well, long enough that he couldn't remember the last time. There was some probability he had in fact never viewed her like this in the whole time he'd known her.

"Did Mélodie tell you why she ran away?" Logos broke the stillness.

Leblanc looked up, her gaze calm.

"She did, yes."

Logos tried to deduct from that answer exactly how much Mélodie had divulged. He also tried to decipher if Leblanc was aware her daughter had confided in him also, but he couldn't detain an answer to either query.

"So," he grinned faintly, "I suppose you have resolved your little dispute."

"I don't drop grudges lightly, you know that love." She reproved in a tone much more familiar to Logos. "But I can hardly stay cross with her, what with her poor itty wrist and runny nose."

The gunner could agree with both those sentiments.

"Besides, it's nice to see her smiling." Leblanc breathed. "Despite it all, she seems in high spirits. It's actually made me consider what you said recently, you know? About Mélodie feeling cooped up."

"Ah yes, that reminds me!"

Logos couldn't actually remember saying that, since it was incidental, but he had spied a good segue into more important matters. He knew the deal struck on the mountain meant Mélodie had to perform a worth of chores and tasks before he fulfilled any of his end, but Mélodie had already carried out a few poignant actions he considered of equal value. She had come clean about the whole fiasco without ever being prompted, she had made her mother happy and, most notably, she had taken responsibility for herself and been genuine in doing so. Nevertheless, he had another ace up his sleeve with the promise of weekly training, if Mélodie were to threaten to fall back into old habits.

"About that, I have had a brief talk with Mélodie and wanted to discuss- ah!"

He had lent too far forward in his haste and his shoulder had bit. He went to clasp a hand to it, blinking wearily through the sting of pain, but was surprised to find someone else's had got there first. Leblanc had her arm outstretched, hand pressed so tenderly against his upper chest it was barely touching him at all.

"I'm sure it can wait." She told him. "You and Mélodie won't be going anywhere for a few days."

"Me, boss?"

"Take a few days off. Ormi has come back with me, I've already given him the spare keys." Logos had wondered what Arissa was rooting for in his jacket earlier. "You need your rest, and let's face it you're not much buck in your current state."

She winked at him and he could feel a spot of colour rush to his cheeks.

"Speaking of which I should leave you to it, love."

Leblanc steadily got to her feet, taking her fan as she went, and plodded back to the top of the stairs. Logos tilted his head for a better view as she went, but snapped back when he heard her begin to laugh softly.

"You know, love, Mélodie did the funniest thing when she was dazed." She turned to face him again.

"Oh?"

Leblanc leaned forward as if to share a secret.

"She said she was sorry!" She whispered. "I couldn't believe it. Mélodie, she never apologises. Seven years and I have never heard those words from her."

That girl was breaking the mould today.

"Wait until her father hears, he'll be so pleased."

The smile that had been playing over the gunner's face wavered. Leblanc went to leave.

"Uh, Boss!"

Her head spun to him expectantly, but his mouth was dry. It had only taken a millisecond to conceive the thought, but it had struck him like a kick from an angry mule.

"I-I really must speak with you tomorrow," he finally managed to get the words to spill out, "in the morning, as soon as possible." One of her eyebrows raised. "It's important."

She cocked her head curiously, then gave a light-hearted shrug.

"Ominous." She chuckled. "Ok, love. Come find me in the morning."

With that, she descended the stairs. Logos was left to absorb the fresh unnerving quiet of his room. He gripped the fabric of the blankets with mounting unease, there was a squirming sensation in the pit of his stomach and his melancholy eyes looked onward, empty. He despised that he would have to be the one to tell her, to shatter the new, wonderful light she emanated and rip the smile from her face. It broke his heart. But, if it meant protecting her from hearing it from far more unsavoury and insidious sources, he would make the sacrifice. He would take the burden of being hated, even if he was just the messenger.

"Yes..ominous." He sighed.


	2. Extra Chapter

A 'special feature' if you will.

* * *

"Ok gentlemen, the game is fifty-two pick up!"

A full deck of cards sprung from the girl's hand and fluttered across the felt top table, hailed by all six men surrounding it groaning loudly.

"Ah! Mélodie." The tall one groused.

With some lack of enthusiasm, the assembled Goons began to gather up the small, finely decorated squares, peering within the upholstery and under feet for any particularly aerial strays. The pyjama-clad little girl at the head of the alcove, astride a tower of cushions so high she could have stretched out her legs and propped her fuzzy Moogle head slippers on the table top, smiled and shrugged sheepishly. The ridiculously over-sized green visor on her head shifted down and covered her eyes.

"Sorry, I couldn't help it."

"Knew you shouldn't have given her the cards." Grumbled one of the Goons as he handed over a wad of them to the gunner, who in turn only passed them to the Dr. Goon opposite.

"It was Ormi who encouraged it. Indris, you deal."

"Fine." The doctor slung back a vial of stiff liqueur and commenced shuffling.

"I's don't know." Chuckled Ormi, heading up the other end of the table. "I's thought it was kinda funny."

"Of course you did."

It hadn't taken long for Mélodie to return to her usual rambunctious demeanour, though it had still been a good couple of months. She was back to classes now and appeared to be much more involved, though only time and her next report card would tell. She had also attended four training sessions so far, to which she had applied herself with great zeal, albeit a little disappointed there hadn't been any more guns. Logos had concentrated more on unarmed combat and since they had started he had got some of his batman Goons to keep an eye on Mélodie to ensure she wasn't trying to practice on other children. No incidents...yet.

"Do I have to give Indris the hat?" Mélodie whispered to Logos, pointing at her headgear and looking a bit put out.

"I'm not wearing that stupid thing." Indris responded dryly, not peeling his attention away from the cards.

"Oh good." She took up her mug of gysahl green root beer in both hands and took a hearty swig.

The Dr. Goon gave the pack a final flourish before flicking a hand to each patron.

"Ok gentlemen, the game is actually Luca Hold 'Em. Bevelle rules since we're mostly Yevonites here."

"Aw c'mon!" Blurted a blonde haired man seated next to Ormi, his brilliant green swirled eyes expressing insult. "That's not fair!"

"Five ex-Yevonites, one Al Bhed. Sorry, Jaffa, you're outnumbered."

"What? But Zekiel's an old Leaguer."

"Yeah, but I was a Crusader before that. I know the rules."

"Ok, ok. _Four_ ex-Yevonites, one Al Bhed and one Leaguer, if you want to get technical. You're still outnumbered."

"Tysh ed." The blonde man grumbled. "Ajena desa."

"Don't sweat it, Jaffa." Spoke the scruffy Goon next to Indris, casually scratching his scraggly excuse for a beard. "The only actual rule in Bevelle rules poker is Al Bheds can't play, soooo shove off."

He flashed a jesting grin at the Al Bhed, Ormi and Zekiel snorted into their drinks.

"Yccruma." Jaffa griped. "Shut up, Bortho."

To her left, Mélodie spied Logos's long fingers rummaging around in his breast pocket, they slowly drew out a roll of white paper, the other hand emerged from under the table with the silver flip lighter in its grasp.

"Can I have-?"

"No."

"Hey, kid's got the right idea. Logos, can you sub me one, pal?"

The gunner, extinguishing the flame and sucking in a long drag of ochu pollen, glared at the Goon with beady eyes.

"Don't you have any of your own, Zekiel?"

The man ran a four-fingered hand through his unruly copper hair, his face painted with a guilty smile.

"I did. Then I told Nahuri I was giving up and she chucked them away."

"You're still fumbling about with that one?" Logos spat, a plume of smoke spluttering from his lips.

"Yeah, what? She's alright."

"She's a blasted nightmare is what she is."

"How do you know? You just don't..." The man trailed off, before flopping against the back of the banquette. "Yevon damn it, Logos! Now you've ruined it."

"Oh it was years ago, and I had the better sense not to go back." The tall man puffed another stream of smoke up to the ceiling of the nook. "What's the problem with that anyway?"

"Because now every time we're at it I'm gonna end up picturing you and Nahuri getting nast- ah!"

One of Logos's jodhpurs had smacked Zekiel in the shin. The Goon peered up from where he was rubbing the fresh bruise to see the gunner motion his head towards Mélodie, who was thankfully gazing into the base of her emptying mug with her chin in the air. The Goon shook his head irritably.

"Bud, you're gonna have to give me a list or something. Are there any girls here you haven't fu- ow!"

A fresh, unlit cigarette had hit him in the eye. Then the bare mug was snatched from Mélodie's clutches and plonked in front of the Goon.

"Go fill that up, would you? Bottle's on my desk, there are matches in the drawer too."

Rubbing his eyelid and sticking the cigarette in his mouth with an annoyed grunt, the Goon slide out from the wall seat and headed over to the desk for the refill.

"Bring over the pálinka too!" Indris beckoned.

"Oh, you're not drinking that garbage!"

"Hey," Mélodie piped to the gunner at her side, "sorry about the snacks by the way. I got hungry on the way here."

Logos looked at Mélodie with an air of sincere sarcasm.

"Yes, I forgot how long that hike from the kitchen is." He drawled.

Her face broke into a coy, toothy grin, a new expression she had begun to adopt since the Monolith. It roughly translated to 'I know I've been cheeky but hey, at least it's not as bad as before'.

Logos wasn't really sure where Mélodie had heard about their poker game but he suspected the most likely theory was Ormi had blabbed something at too high a volume. In all honesty, if that was the case, then Ormi was happy to accommodate the girl regardless. This was his 'soiree' after all.

Once the stitches from Logos's shoulder had been extracted and the gunner was more mobile, Ormi had beseeched Leblanc to allow him a few more days off in order to go to the western isles, as he said he had some 'unfinished business' there. An understanding and perceptive Leblanc had permitted and off he went. On that occasion Logos had slightly regretted abandoning the crutches so early, pride had got the better of him, greater ailments than a busted knee had not stopped him before but he was still hobbling a touch even now, he cursed age. The wide warrior had returned to work a week later, mood poignantly jovial and whistling merrily. Logos barely had a chance to inform Ormi he was late to clock in before the round man had blurted out,

"She's said yes!"

Remembering Mélodie telling him he must act surprised, Logos gave the performance of a lifetime. He raised his eyebrows a fraction higher than usual, nailed it. The news travelled fast and Ormi received many a firm pat on the back, shaking of hands and chants of congratulations. Even Leblanc was enamoured with excitement and flung her arms about the man's beefy shoulders for a hug that Logos inspected was much longer and exuberant than usual. The tall man had scanned over the throngs of well-wishing Goons to try and spot Treza and suggest a faux marital proposal in the hopes of perhaps getting the same attention from his Boss. He had also acquiesced and agreed to be Ormi's best man, it had been the very next thing the warrior had bellowed after initially breaking the news to his friend.

There was an earnest and fervent proposition of a good drink between some of the veteran men, all to the excuse of 'this calls for a celebration!'. However, it had been difficult to set a time until now since a lot of important Syndicate work had fallen by the wayside, what with Mélodie's monster run-in. And Leblanc, over the moon or not with the announcement of a wedding, would always be steadfast and unwavering in her ambitions; it was back to business. They had simply concluded that it was easier to ship in a crate of booze and settle on an evening of losing all their wages to Lady Luck, it did feel a bit unspectacular. Logos was sure he had some cigars somewhere and was racking his brain trying to remember where.

"One root beer for the little lady." Zekiel announced, returning to the card table booth at the back of Logos's office and passing the girl the mug. "And here's ya sugar water, Indris."

He shook the bottle of arylide coloured liquid before dumping it down in front of the dealer.

"Ugh." The Al Bhed's nose wrinkled up in distaste. "How do you drink that stuff?"

"I know." Zekial concurred. "It's so sweet."

"Meh, I like it." The doctor uncorked the bottle and began preparing himself another tipple.

"What are you a vespa?" Bortho jabbed.

The Dr. Goon's thumb glided over the top of the deck in his hand and laid out five cards in the middle of the table, in a line and face down.

"Right," Indris began, placing down the pack purposefully, "blind time."

The doctor turned to his left, to where the little girl was staring at the line of cards perplexed.

"Huh?"

Logos took up a pair of cards settled in front of Mélodie and waggled them in her face, his own hand poised between his bony fingers.

"Here."

"Oh." She accepted them cheerily.

"Now take one of your chips and place it on the table."

"Why?"

"To show you're betting."

"I thought we were going to play Sphere Break?"

A couple of the Goons groused boorishly, Jaffa had his head in his hands.

"I came to gamble, not piss my money away." Bortho hissed to his comrades out of the corner of his mouth.

"Did the cards not give you a clue?" Logos mocked. "Now, bet."

"But what if I don't want to bet?"

"You have to bet, Mélodie, you're the small blind." Indris instructed.

"What? I'm not blind, I can see fine."

Mélodie could hear Ormi's jolly laugh from within his tankard at the other end of the table and stuck her tongue out at him playfully.

"No, a blind bet," Logos tried to explain, already nettled, "just take one of your chips and put it in the pot."

"What pot?"

"On the table!"

Mélodie glanced down at her pitiful pile of colourful chips. There were three little towers, the tallest was full of yellow and red striped chips, the next green and white and finally, the shortest, blue and purple striped ones. She tentatively picked up a blue and purple disc.

"One of these?"

She went to toss it into the middle of the table but her wrist was snatched up by Logos (thankfully the unbroken side).

"Aeon's wept Mélodie! That's 50gil, let's not go mad just yet!"

"Oh, sorry."

"Here," Logos swiped up one of the yellow and red chips, "just put a 10gil in."

Mélodie hesitantly took up the token and, leaning forward on her hands on knees, smacked it down into the felt proudly. She returned to her pillows, smiling.

"Right," Indris declared after a moment, "big blind." He motioned to the gunner.

"Hold on!" The patrons turned to Bortho, who was sitting bolt upright and looking baffled.

"Now what?" Logos grumbled.

"Is she," The Goon's eyes darted between the gunner and Mélodie, "is she playing with real money?"

Logos, a bit perturbed and a bit embarrassed, glanced around at the curious sets of eyes now boring into him.

"Yes." He replied simply.

"Where's she got the gil from?" Bortho rebutted.

"Yeah," Jaffa interjected, "I assumed she'd just be dealt in with some blanks."

"This one of your bright ideas, chubs?" Zekiel gave Ormi's shoulder a nudge and nearly broke a knuckle.

"Huh? Nah, I's don't knows where she's got's it. Mélodie, ya mum's didn't give you's any did she? Does she's know it's for gambling?"

"Actually, I gave her some." A low mutter came from the top of the table.

"Come again?" Bortho's head snapped round.

Logos cleared his throat bashfully.

"I gave Mélodie some money to play."

For a moment the men sat still, gawking at the gunner. Before bursting into laughter.

"You did what!" Bortho roared.

"That's hilarious!" Whooped Jaffa.

"Indris, count her chips I want to know how much this moron gave her!" Bortho craned across the doctor for a better look.

"Farplane on earth, she must have at least a 1000gil there!" Zekiel was gripping his sides and threatening to fall off the bench.

The Dr. Goon gave Bortho a firm shove back away from Mélodie's provisions and the scruffy goon, now wiping his eyes, turned to the gunner.

"What made you think _that_ ," he pointed at the girl with an imposing finger, "was a good investment?"

Logos only responded with a growl and an abashed eye roll.

"Pfft, listen Logos," Bortho lent back and began to fiddle with his cards, "if you've got enough money to be throwing it around like that then you're being paid too much."

"Big blind!" Indris repeated, trying to bring the group back to the task at hand.

Two red and yellow chips bounced into the middle of the table, before the hand that threw them plucked the cigarette from its owners mouth and flicked away a lump of ash.

"Brilliant, now the real betting can start." Zekiel said, rubbing his hands together. "Let the game begin!"

Over the next few minutes, the booth fell into an intense and smokey hush. Only three sounds would occasionally break the silence, the odd clack of chips pinging against one another, the subdued crackle of glowing cigarette ends and swallows of spiced beverages cooling dry throats. Until it got to Mélodie's turn again where it took another heated exchange to explain to her that she needed to match the bet. It only drew to a close when Logos snatched up one her chips himself and thwacked it on the table, all whilst Bortho and Zekiel snickered at the painful play.

"All matched," Indris said simply, "time for the flop."

His nimble fingers reached out and gently turned the first three cards of the line. A three of spades, a nine of diamonds and an ace of clubs.

"Ah shi-! I mean, hmm hmm." The Al Bhed rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Ha! Don't think your Bikanel rules would help you there, fella." Bortho chaffed. "You're a terrible bluff."

"Oh crid ib, telgrayt!"

With that the blonde man went to retrieve an ashtray from the desk, he was fed up of debris from the gunner's cigarette flaking onto his shoulder.

"Can we add another rule to Bevelle rules?" Bortho inquired. "Only Spiran spoken at the game table."

"So Ormi," Zekiel mumbled through an inhale of his smoke, "you and Kiku set a date yet?"

Ormi re-positioned the cards in his hand carefully and took another swig of his ale.

"Nah, not yet." He answered, smacking his lips. "We's haven't talked about any plans, still lettin' it all sink in ya know's. Maybe's in the summer though."

"Do you think the wedding will be here? Or does Kiku want to have it in the western isles?" Jaffa reappeared, thrusting a teeming ashtray in front of Logos's already waning cigarette.

"I's don't know." Ormi shrugged. "Like I's said, we haven't talked about nothin'. She's got family out there though, and she's probably gonna want the kids she's teaches to get's involved."

"Oh, if it's not in Spira do you think I will get to go?" Mélodie asked, looking dejected.

The warrior beamed and waved a hand to assure the girl not to worry.

"Ah don't sweat it Mélodie, both Kiku and I would want you's there." He theatrically cupped a hand to his mouth and whispered, "I's was gonna suggest to's Kiku you's be the flower girl."

Mélodie's eyes sparkled with delight and she clapped her puny hands feverishly.

"Ooooo! Can I get a new dress?"

"Yeah Logos will buy you one!"

Zekiel made an ugly noise and threatened to spit out his mouthful of beer at Bortho's dig. After a testing few moments, he managed to swallow it down.

"So Kiku's got some family, will they help pay for the big day?"

Ormi was taken aback, bemused by the question, it was clear finance was something he hadn't considered.

"Ugh, nah, she's just got's some sisters and a brother."

"Maybe the boss'll give you something towards it." Jaffa said, desperately battling to uncork the bottle under his arm so he could add some of it's contents to the ice in his tumbler.

"The Boss? Give over." Bortho sniffed.

"I don't know." Zekiel scratched his neck, contemplating. "I mean you and Logos have been here longer than, well, pretty much anyone. It's not totally ridiculous that she might slip you some dough."

"She gave Drehne and Yalika some money when they got married, remember?" Jaffa added.

"Yes, but that was a present, not to fund the ceremony." Indris uttered, recounting his chips.

"Yeah but this is different," Zekiel remarked, turning to the large man at the head of the table, "this is Ormi we're talking about, eh big fella? Besides Leblanc was freaking ecstatic at the news."

The auburn-haired Goon gave Ormi a warm pat on the back. The warrior smiled but still appeared ill at ease.

"Ya know's," Ormi began gingerly, "you's say's that but since I's first told her she's ain't brought it back up once. In fact, I's even say she's avoiding the subject or summin'."

"Weird." Jaffa had finally been able to release the bottle top.

"Yeah's it is." Ormi pondered. "Hey, Logos, do you's know what's up with her?"

Logos, who had just accepted a fresh owed cigarette rolled to him by Indris, had remained quiet for the duration of this discussion. It was for good reason, because he knew exactly why Leblanc was acting so odd.

The morning after Mélodie's excursion Logos had shuffled up the purple-clad stairs and rapped on the boss's office door with a quivering hand. She'd welcomed him in blithely and insisted he take a seat so he wouldn't have to stand awkwardly on his crutches. Thirty minutes later Logos left the office, and had punched the corridor wall with such burning vehement force it was a wonder he hadn't caused another injury. She had cried, it was also the first time he had ever seen her cry, and he'd hated it. Apart from required business, the pair had not spoken since. He had yet to get a chance to speak with Mélodie on this subject, and to confess he may have divulged some difficult, but important, news to her mother. Somehow though, Logos sensed the girl already knew this, perhaps Leblanc and had had a heart to heart with her daughter. He hoped so and she didn't seem at all distrustful of him, so that was fortunate.

"Haven't a clue." Logos replied blankly, engulfing the end of his cigarette with the white flame of his lighter.

"Ok, next round of betting."

"Chill out, Indris." Zekiel vented. "You looking for an early night or something?"

"I can help with that. Put ya money on the table, Doc." Bortho smirked, fanning his cards at the physician.

Indris ignored the gripes and gestured for Mélodie to put in.

"Just tap the table for Fayth's sake."

"What?" Mélodie blared.

"Tap the table." Logos repeated.

"Like this?" Mélodie lent forward haphazardly and knocked on the table as if it were a door, the chip piles wobbled a bit.

"That'll do, that's a check." With that two of the tall man's long fingers tapped twice on the felt top firmly. He took a sip of whiskey, popped the cigarette back in his mouth and returned to his cards.

Jaffa lazily bobbed the back of his hand against the surface also, gaze not shifting from his cards. Ormi too thumped his burly knuckles into the table after a brief mindful pause. A red and yellow chip rolled into the centre of the table and Zekiel reclined back again, taking a healthy glug of beer. Bortho glowered at the old Youth Leaguer.

"Is that it?"

"What?"

"Is that your bet? Is that it, 10gil?"

"Meh, it's early." The Goon shrugged. "Least I bet."

"10gil when she's a contender?" One of Bortho's thumbs was directed at Mélodie. "Pah! You lot can be so boring, I think we need to liven this up a bit."

Much in the fashion of a miniature crane, Bortho's grubby fingers hoisted up two purple and blue tokens and flung them onto the table.

"100gil!" He decreed. "Who's matching?"

The gaggle of men stared at the small bright discs, interests peaked. Suddenly, another two blue and purple chips joined them to make four.

"Go on then." Indris sighed.

Before Logos could implore Mélodie to fold she had propelled two of the same discs into the pot. His thumb and index finger came up and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, before reluctantly matching the bet. Jaffa, Ormi, and Zekiel obediently added their own chips also.

"I still cannot get over Logos trying to win his own money back from a little girl." Bortho chattered under his breath.

"Well, at least I gave the money to her freely." Logos sneered into his drink. "Rather than get it mugged off me on the job."

The group simpered, recalling the sticky fingers of The Gullwing's former thief.

"You better hope Lady Luck's on your side tonight, buddy." Bortho scowled. "Cos I'm planning to rob you blind."

He deftly tapped his downturned hand with a yellowing fingernail, before his wiry hand curled around his drink and lifted it to his lips.

"Then again," he continued, "we know how _quick_ you can be with the ladies, she'd probably get bored of you after a round."

"Hey!"

"Whoa!"

Mélodie, who had, unbeknownst to Logos, stolen his flip lighter and was trying to decipher the Yevon inscription, now found a hand from each of the adjoining men clamped over her ears. She noted how they were all frowning and looking appalled at Bortho, she hadn't even really been paying attention, something about Logos being fast and girls too, maybe the gunner had out swam one at Blitzball once? Who knows.

"Come on, Bortho, there's a lady present." Ormi scolded.

The shaggy Goon held his hands up but still wore an expression of indifference. Logos plucked the lighter from Mélodie's meddling mitts with an 'I'll take that' and ensured it was secured in his furthest jacket pocket.

"Can we please keep any fights until after we're drunk." Indris droned. "Anyway, the turn."

The Dr. Goon pitched one of his fingers under the fourth card in the line and flipped it over. A seven of spades. Each man deliberated over his own hand.

"Vilg ed! I fold." The Al Bhed cried, smacking his cards down on the table.

"Cool it, fella." Zekiel tried to placate him. "It's not even your go yet, Mél and Logos might have just checked."

"Oh, there'll be no checking in this round." Another purple and blue chip was being twisted through Bortho's scrawny fingers.

"It is kind of ungentlemanly to not wait your turn," Indris admitted, regaling the laws of poker etiquette, "but whatever, if you fold, you fold. Mélodie?"

"What's it called if I don't hit the table?"

"Mélodie." Logos warned.

"If you don't check? Then you have to bet, at this point it's called a raise." Indris explained.

"Ok then."

"Mélodie!"

"Raise!" Two white and green chips rolled their way along the fabric and settled in the middle of the table.

"You better have some bloody good cards." Logos hissed at the girl through gritted teeth.

"Bet is raised by 50gil." Indris announced. "You're up Logos, call? Raise?"

"Fold? Fold would be pretty wise about now." Bortho jeered.

"Oh, give me a minute, I'm thinking." The gunner grumbled, trying to prevent his cigarette from tumbling out of his mouth.

"Man's choked," Bortho muttered.

"Let's hope he doesn't do the same when it comes to his best man's speech."

"Wahay!"

The Dr. Goon, being of a more, not reserved but tepid nature, was often so subdued that any joke made by him was a cause for profound observance and gaiety. He lazily raised his own lanky arms in mock triumph, just for a brief instance, then poured himself a victory drink.

"Has you's started writing that already, Logos?" Ormi asked.

"Course he hasn't," Bortho replied in words.

However, Logos instead replied with action, he noticeably shuddered and popped his neck a bit.

"Oh speaking of things that make your skin crawl, that reminds me." Zekiel had just cracked open a fresh beer, using the table as a bottle opener, Logos winced at the thought of the woodwork being marked. "Bit off-piste I know lads, but guess who I spied making a flying visit recently."

The men drew closer to the old Leaguer.

"Well go on..." He teased. "Guess."

They stared at each other blankly.

"I's dunno, that Ronso guy?" Ormi tried.

"Um uh," Zekiel mumbled through the froth of his beer. "Nah, you'd know ol' Whiskers was here, those great hairy feet padding about. No, try again."

"Shinra?"

"Nope, last chance."

The patrons rubbed the backs of their necks and took pensive slugs of alcohol whilst waiting for inspiration to strike.

"Oh I know, I know!" Mélodie trilled.

"Yeah but you're a clever-clogs," Zekiel said spiritedly. "Let the dumb boys solve it this time."

"How does that phrase go, Mél? You know when you want a hint?" Jaffa appealed to the girl.

"One two give us a clue?"

"That's the one."

Zekiel tutted and rolled his eyes.

"Ok, if I were to say he used to be my boss before The Boss..."

"What, Nooj?" Jaffa blurted.

"It can't have been surely." Logos concurred.

"Well, unless you lot know of another pony-tailed guy with metal limbs, a cane and a pair of specks, then who else could it be?"

"He's not been up to Gagazet in nearly two years. Why the sudden change of hea-?"

"Achooo."

Logos stopped mid-sentence, interrupted by Mélodie's wimpy little sneeze. He didn't have to say anything, she could tell from his eyes he was inquiring.

"He came to see me when I was sick." She revealed. "He brought me a new dolly and some taffy. I would have brought some tonight but I ate it."

"What flavour was it?" Zekiel asked.

"Eskir berry."

"Ah that's a shame, that's my favourite."

Logos had to admit that Mélodie was sick for some time. He supposed it wouldn't have been a total impossibility that her father might come to be at her bedside after hearing the news, even if it were for but a fleeting period. Her high fever and hoarse cough had only worsened over the night since the pair returned to the Château.

The gunner had gone to check in on her the following morning, but not before tending to things with The Boss and barking at a Goon to fetch someone to see to the now damaged plastering. He had creaked the door open as softly as he could, and found Arissa sleeping on the job. Still far too shaken and raw from his talk with Leblanc he couldn't find the strength to reprimand her, instead he told her to clock off and get some proper rest, he would take up the post in her place. Settling himself into the appointed wing-back chair he had observed Mélodie's slumbering form. She was half seated thanks to a mountain of pillows and her cast clad wrist laid upon one singular plump cushion. Her skin was white, translucent and glistening from heat, she had heavy eye bags, her lips and fingertips were an off shade of mauve and with every laboured breath, you could hear the crackle of her lungs and the rattle of her ribs. The pair remained in a hush, the tempest still rolling outside, snow caking the window ledge and mistral air whistling through. Occasionally, when not gazing over the feeble girl and deep in rumination, the gunner would get up and tuck the blankets up a pinch tighter to Mélodie's grazed chin or limp over to the simmering fireplace and stoke the wood.

After about an hour, whilst Logos was still as alert and as vigilant as a Great Dane, another nanny Goon crept in to relieve him. He'd gathered his crutches, lurched to his feet and headed for the door, but not before giving the girl's able hand a tender pat.

"Bye." A tiny voice bleated.

He had spun around from the threshold and witnessed Mélodie peering at him through weak, bleary eyes. She'd been awake the whole time.

"Fold, fold, fold, fold, fold." Bortho's annoying tones chanted from across the table.

A blue and purple chip bounded into the amassing mound on the table.

"Match." Logos said coyly through a haze of cigarette fumes.

"Jaffa? Oh, that's right you folded." The Al Bhed, nose in a glass tumbler, thrust a finger at his abandoned cards for the Dr. Goon. "Ormi?"

Ormi's pudgy face distorted as he tried to address this delicate quandary. His black eyes kept switching between his cards and the decorative pile of tokens by his side. Eventually, he decided to gather up two green and white ones and match too. He had taken so long deliberating that Zekiel had already made up his mind and his own chips ended up landing at the same time as the warrior's.

"Bortho?" The old Leaguer gave a derisive bow to the bearded man.

"Do you need to ask?" Another pair of purple and blue tokens pattered onto the felt. "Raise, by 50gil."

The Goon gave a throaty cough and turned to the doctor. Indris tweaked the corner of his downturned hand, resting on the table, to remind himself of their value. His expression turned serious as he consulted them.

"I fold." He conceded.

"Figures." Bortho scoffed. "You and Jaffa are no fun. So, who's still in, it's 50gil to play on."

Before any of the men could even consider their next move, Mélodie, totally oblivious to Logos's burning sideways stare, clapped another pair of green and white discs onto the table.

"Match!" She shouted. "It is 'match' right?"

Indris nodded to her, smiling faintly at the gunner who as now massaging his temples.

"Ha! You got to give it to the kid, she's got balls." Bortho grinned. "No brains but balls."

"Hey!" Zekiel retorted to the ex-Yevonite's put down.

The gunner, on the other hand, was glowering at his opponent through slim, icy eyes. On this occasion he didn't even confer with his cards, a purple and blue chip settled in the middle of the table. Logos's long fingers tapped gently but rhythmically against his cards, his glare unbudging, Bortho gave a short tip of his head, so minute it was almost a tick. At the far end of the table, Ormi's pudgy hand was twitching above his collection of chips, again his head was swinging between the tokens and his cards. His stumpy fingers delicately selected a blue and purple chip, then placed it back down again.

"Nahs." He yielded. "It's not worth's it. I's fold."

"What!" Bortho squawked. "It's your damn games night and you ain't even gambling?"

"I's gambled, what you's call this?" He heavy-handedly prodded the heap of betted chips. "I's got's to save my cash now. This is all I's got, I ain't gonna be buying back in if I's get screwed over."

"It is only the first round, Bortho." Indris's voice rose with the vapour of a just-lit cigarette.

"Don't sweat it, bud. I ain't gone soft on you."

Zekiel's partially present hand threw a purple and blue chip onto the surface, a little awkwardly as it nearly slipped out the gap where his little finger should have been before he was ready.

"All matched." Indris derived it was wiser to jump in before Bortho had a chance to raise the stakes all the more. "The river," he asserted, flipping the final card, the ace of spades. "Final round of betting."

Logos's keen eyes were counting the current total of the pot. He tallied 1,390gil, but that didn't make sense...unless...oh no.

"Mélodie! What is wrong with you? Why didn't you just check?"

Bortho was sniggering at them from across the table.

"But that's no fun." The girl pouted.

"Well just bet a 10gil or something, not a hundred!"

"You gave this money to me to play, right? Well, that's what I'm doing."

"To be fair, Logos," Indris interjected, "she has a point, it is now hers to do what she wants with."

"Yeah," Ormi bellowed from the desk, where he was refuelling his flagon with ale. "You's should have just given her's, like, a hundred or summit in the first place, not a thousand."

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing." Logos groaned under his breath.

Bortho leered over the table at his tall and irate comrade.

"Don't worry, slim, that money will be much better cared for once it's in my pocket."

The gunner forcibly stabbed out his dying cigarette into the overburdened ashtray. Collecting some fragments of his patience he studied his cards, then folded two purple and blue chips into his palm and placed them on the table neatly. The crew waited for an assured and cool Zekiel to make his move. He smiled briefly and raised an eyebrow.

"I fold."

"So much for not going 'soft'." Bortho griped.

"Buddy, I've had nothing since the flop. Fucked it ages ago -oh!"

The old Leaguer clapped a hand over his mouth and stared wide-eyed towards Mélodie, who was giggling impishly.

"Now, little lady, don't you go using that word, "he deterred, "And if you do, you didn't hear it from me." He winked and threw back a swig of his beer.

In all honesty, Mélodie had heard much worse before, often when sleuthing within Logos's vicinity. She had actually learned a handful of more colourful ones as of recent. There was this one time in a training session, whilst she was learning to parry with a bamboo pole, where she had caught the gunner a crack on the upper thigh. Suddenly her knowledge of vocabulary had been vastly expanded. His limp, which had virtually healed, made an unexpected reappearance and at full clout too, it perhaps even looked slightly worse than before. He'd called the session to an early close after that, garbling something about needing to go lie down for a while.

"Hmm, I don't know," she mused, "perhaps I was too thirsty to hear anything." She winked back and nudged her empty mug across the felt.

"Right you are!" Zekiel nabbed the mug cheerily and leapt up from the wall seat.

Mélodie was about to resettle herself on her pillows before she noticed something, Bortho was no longer staring at Logos, he was looking at her. His brow was lowered, eyes twinged with hostility and the corner of his mouth kept twitching upward slightly.

"Errrm..."

"Raise." He said slimily and three blue and purple chips hit the table top.

The men huddled closer together, as if the pendant ceiling light was causing the walls to close in on them. Zekiel had returned but was so distracted by the play he had forgotten to pass the girl her mug. Mélodie's eyes floated up from the chips, Bortho was still scowling at her.

"Mélodie?" Indris's voice broke the discomfort crisply.

"Oh, er..."

Bortho's vision didn't shift, his piercing little pupils burning into her. It was so awkward, she felt like the booth had just shrunk by two feet.

"Mélodie?" Indris's voice drifted in again. "You can either match the bet or fold if you like."

With some difficulty, she managed to break away from Bortho's gaze and instead stole a glance to the gunner on her left. She found he too was concentrating hard but not on her, on the side of Bortho's head. His hands were clasped together, elbows on the table, and positioned to cover the lower part of his face. His countenance was stony, much in the way a hawk looks when about to lunge for its prey.

Mélodie stuck out her chin and puffed up her chest.

"Match!" She cried and rained a fistful of chips onto the table.

There was a pause.

"Mélodie," Indris cleared his throat, "you already bet a hundred, you only needed a fifty to match."

She peered down at her wager and immediately realised her mistake, three purple and blue tokens stared up at her. She could hear a low, gurgling chuckle.

"Gutsy, kid." Bortho's voice was so oily she was surprised black ooze wasn't trickling out from between his teeth. "I like that."

"That's, erm, a raise of 100gil." Indris informed, still taken aback. "Logos?"

The scruffy Goons eyes had finally released Mélodie and now met the gunner's across the table. Without hesitation, one of Logos's hands unthreaded and cast two purple and blue and two green and white discs into the pot.

"Match." He drawled, slotting his fingers back together.

"Bortho, a hundred to stay in."

One of Bortho's grimy fingernails ran up and down the length of his tower of purple and blue chips. He stopped, and wedged it under the top three. With bated breath, the men watched as he began to slowly tip them into his hand.

"No." He said plainly. "No, I'll go easy on you, this time."

He replaced one of the chips back on top of the tower tactfully before sliding the two selected tokens into the middle of the table.

"Match."

"Ok, all matched," Indris breathed, "time for the showdown, gentlemen."

In terms of luck, there are many peculiar trinkets and customs people cherish in the hopes it may bring good fortune. A chocobo feather, a tonberry foot, a four pronged purpurea leaf. In Logos's case it wasn't something physical. In his youth, while serving in the Yevonite army, he had come to adopt his own subtle salute to 'The Showdown', and it had actually served him rather well. His hands separated and formed the shape of two 'guns', he cocked them in turn and made a light clicking noise with his tongue. Mélodie snorted into her root beer which Zekiel had finally delivered to her.

"Right, so Mélodie, you go firs-."

"Ah no," Bortho cut in, "kid's cards are main event, we want to end this on a laugh. Stretch, let's see what ya got?"

"That's not really how it works, Bortho." The bedraggled Goon gave the doctor a look that was somehow both jaded and imposing. "But, uh, I guess it doesn't really matter."

"Come on then." Bortho grinned. "Lay 'em out."

Logos, feeling the nuisance and annoyance of Jaffa craning over his shoulder and invading his personal space, fastidiously laid his hand on the table. A seven of clubs and a seven of hearts.

"Three of a kind, seven high." Indris notified.

There was a lull at the table, Bortho was studying the gunner's cards blankly. Logos reclined and swirled his glass of whiskey before seeing it off. Bortho's mouth slowly broke into a crooked toothy smile.

"Oh dear, that's a shame." He simpered and smoothly flipped his own cards. A five of spades and a Queen of spades.

"Ah a flush!" Jaffa gawked before Indris could get a word in.

"That's rotten luck." Zekiel sighed. Bortho gave an affronted sniff.

"Ya's got's to hand it to him's, Logos, that was pretty slick." Ormi had to confess.

Logos said nothing, the edges of his mouth only drew lower, a tad humiliated.

"Anyway, anyway," Bortho mitigated with all the modesty of a posing peacock, "we still have the little miss's to see. But, first, we should really give her a hand for being such a good bluff."

He had already begun to sweep up some of the chips from the table, Zekiel gave the back of Bortho's head a sharp knock.

"Go on." Logos uttered solemnly from his corner.

The little girl perused her cards one last time. She pushed the visor out of her yes then, shrugging, allowed them to drop to the table.

"I don't know," she sighed, "I don't really know what I've got."

The group loomed over the array of discarded cards and trophy chips to get a better view of the revealed hand. A seven of diamonds and an ace of hearts.

"Ha, pathetic. Well, you tried kid but poker is all about tough luc..." Bortho's words broke off as the cogs in his head began to whir.

"A pair," Jaffa read aloud, "and a three of a kind, ace high. That means..."

"Bwahaha! Kid's got a full house!" Ormi hooted. "She's got's you there, Bortho!"

"Good girl, Mél!" Zekiel punched the air. "Well played!"

"Fyo du cruf dryd tuilrapyk!"

"Will you stop jabberer in that stupid language!" Bortho seethed. "There's no way, check 'em again!"

"What's there to check?" Indris said smoothly. "The cards are, literally, on the table."

A confused Mélodie bumbled off her pillows and onto the table, the visor slipping from her ears.

"I won?"

"Mélodie wins, hand it over." Indris called, bringing his hand down firmly on the table in a chopping motion.

"I won!"

She threw her whole body over the bushel of chips, almost swimming in it.

"My, my," Logos smirked, "it seems we have a dark horse in our midst."

"Gah, beginner's luck." Bortho grunted.

"Now, don't be bitter, Bortho. You've got all night to try and win it back."

"Don't know why you're so smug, she's got your cash too, double in fact!"

"Ah give it a rest, will ya?" Zekiel plonked a fresh bottle of beer in front of the sore loser next to him.

Drinks were refilled and cigarettes traded and lit as Mélodie raked up her winnings, with some help from Logos and Indris. The group relinquished their hands to the Dr. Goon and, after an artful shuffle, he delivered them to the player on his left.

"Mélodie, your turn to deal."

"Ooooh, ok gentlemen the game is fifty-tw-!"

"NO!"

As the group protested in unison, Logos sprung across the table and snagged the deck from Mélodie's hand.

"I think perhaps it best if we skip Mélodie, after that earlier fiasco."

The girl beamed mischievously.

After a few minutes each man, and girl, was dealt their duo of cards, blinds were made with significantly less fuss this time, and the flop was revealed; round two commenced. Mélodie stared intently at her cards, held soundly between her tiny fingers, a two of clubs and a four of hearts, a feeble hand. She peeked over the top of the decorated squares and observed how the group were also all fixated on their own 'weapons', deep in contemplation. Her brown eyes cautiously turned downward to a small pocket of space where the corner of the curving wall seat was. Here, just a little way below her, under the table and out of sight from the other inhabitants of the booth, was a long, slender, open palm. It was empty, but then Logos, poker face in all it's glory directed away at his own cards, flicked out a card from his sleeve so fast that Mélodie had to debate whether it ever inhabited the intervening air. The King of hearts, adorned with a meticulously detailed etching of a Behemoth roaring fiercely. Once she had carried out one last check to ensure the coast was clear, she delicately took it up and placed it in her own hand.

She started to wonder if perhaps renegotiations may be in order after the night's festivities, from fifty-fifty to sixty-forty. After all, it was all her idea.


End file.
